76 email: editor@printmonthly.co.uk should integrate seamlessly into prepress, tooling, and press operations, ensuring brand colour targets are met consistently. It should also support ECG workflows, enabling converters to replace spot colours with a fixed ink set to increase press efficiency, reduce waste, and support sustainability.” Failing to prioritise colour management in CI flexo, Duckham adds, can lead to variability in print quality, longer setup times, higher material waste, and ultimately, brand dissatisfaction. “Brand owners expect colour consistency not just from one job to the next, but across packaging types, substrates, and global print sites,” he comments, adding: “If colour accuracy fluctuates, it reflects poorly on the converter’s production quality and reliability. “From a production standpoint, without proper systems, operators are forced to then make manual adjustments that introduce variation and increase downtime. Underinvestment here also limits a converter’s ability to optimise workflows or adopt sustainable practices.” Build Customer Trust Also able to support in this area is Contact Originators, which, based in Manchester, works with customers on packaging origination, graphics management, and flexographic plate production. Technical support manager Gareth Heward says a quality solution should ensure data gathered during fingerprinting is reliably translated into a press-ready profile, meaning any file separated to that profile prints exactly as expected. “Equally important is proofing,” he says, adding: “Printers need to trust that what they see on a contract proof is a target that’s both accurate and achievable on a press. We work closely with customers to ensure their profiling and proofing systems are fully aligned, so they can operate with complete confidence from prepress to print.” When colour management is overlooked, Heward warns, the cost is felt across the entire process. He explains inaccurate or incomplete profiles create problems that cascade through prepress and onto press, resulting in slower approvals, increased waste, and even full reprints in worst-case scenarios. “This not only affects costs, but also press uptime, lead times, and customer trust.” As to how Contact Originators can help, the company has a long-standing partnership with GMG Color, which he describes as the “gold standard” in colour management and proofing technology. He says GMG Color technologies are a “particularly strong fit” for the packaging sector, where there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ profile. “We regularly work with a wide variety of substrates, ink systems, and applications, often requiring the integration of spot colours into complex separations,” Heward July / August 2025 - Issue 355 ▲ BOBST has developed oneECG technology as an ‘Extended Colour Gamut’ (ECG) solution tailored for CI flexo A spectrophotometer is an instrument that measures the amount of photons (the intensity of light) absorbed after it passes through a sample solution Factoid Colour management is ultimately about control and confidence – the ability to consistently deliver accurate, repeatable colour across runs, substrates, and formats COLOUR MANAGEMENT
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