Schur Star Systems simplifies flexo platemaking with Esko’s CDI Crystal 4835 XPS

Founded in 1846 by Johan Wilhelm Schur, the sixth-generation family-run company is one of Denmark's oldest. The group Schur is comprised of 15 international companies in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, Australia and the USA that provide a variety of packaging from cartonboard to flexibles. There are around 850 employees. Schur Star Systems is the flexible division that produces pre-made bags and supplies their customers worldwide.

For more than ten years Schur Star Systems has been working with Esko’s technology to produce flexo plates in-house. It chose Esko’s CDI Crystal 4835 XPS to further automate pre-press. The system combines all the advantages of Crystal technology including ease of use, reliability, consistency and quality, with the popular 4835 format.

With Esko’s Flexo Platemaking Simplified strategy for flexible packaging and labels, pre-press has become a highly automated process. From the one-up artwork all the way to the press-ready set of flexo plates, Esko systematically eliminates manual steps and inefficiencies where possible. The platemaking itself is reduced from the typical seven-step process to a two-step process, significantly reducing operator intervention as well as eliminating the need for operators with platemaking expertise.

Lene Hoegh Madsen, Schur Star Systems’s pre-press manager, commented: ‘In our end-to-end prepress implementation, we use Automation Engine, Deskpack, and Plato for step and repeat. For platemaking, we now have the new CDI Crystal 4835 and the XPS Crystal 4835. This system is very easy to operate. It is very fast to train new operators so that we can have cross-trained staff available to make plates at night or early in the morning, depending on our needs.’

Esko’s Pascal Thomas, director of pre-press and platemaking, said: ‘We are on a mission to make flexo platemaking simple and straightforward. Schur Star Systems is yet another reference of a flexo converter who embraces Esko’s flexo plate making solution for its ease of use and advanced automation.’