Continuing our new series featuring the voices of ERA members
Member Spotlight: Janoschka
Welcome to the fifth edition of our ‘Member Spotlight’ series, designed to shine a light on the diverse perspectives and experiences of our member organisations. Spanning the globe, our members offer unique insights into industry trends, challenges and innovations. By featuring their voices, we aim to foster a deeper understanding of the gravure printing landscape and wider print industry.
Industry trends and challenges
ERA: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the Gravure print segment today?
Janoschka: The streamlining of many brand portfolios and the more and more shorter print runs is challenging the gravure technology. Moreover, as there is a low level of standardization in prepress for gravure printing, launching a new design is quite time consuming. The interaction of many parameters, like printing press, printing process (e.g. colour sequence, spot colours etc.) and for sure the graphic services play a major role and need best alignment.
What emerging trends do you believe will shape the future of the print industry?
Sustainability is for sure one of the major talks of the town. Sustainable strategies of the brand owners seem even to overrule topics like brand consistency. The mix of different printing technologies in one packaging is also among the emerging trends.
Technology and innovation
Which new technologies have had the most significant impact on your gravure printing operations in the past year?
The demand for more sustainable and tailor-made steel bases is growing. Cellaxy laser engraving, finally market-ready, marks a technology turnaround to replace more and more conventional laser technologies.
“The demand for more sustainable
and tailor-made steel bases
is growing.”
Business Development and Growth
What strategies have you found most effective for business growth in your industry segment?
The global footprint is Janoschka’s unique USP. Operating in 13 countries worldwide close to our customers is providing added value. Especially handling order peaks is a great benefit for our customers.
The support we offer is highly appreciated by our customers. We are familiar with the different printing technologies and our expertise in print colour management helps to manage the complexity and ensure a brilliant print result.
What are your biggest challenges in attracting and retaining skilled talent in the print industry?
Packaging prepress is still a niche and requires very specific expertise and knowledge. By offering great career perspectives in an interesting market and business environment including benefits we are managing this HR issue quite well. We are proud of our talented and committed people.
Sustainability and Environmental Impact
How important is sustainability to your customers, and how has it influenced your service offerings?
Today, sustainability and the sustainable supply chain is more and more playing a role for our customers. Also of course driven by the EU’s new packaging regulation. We are committed to different CSR approaches, also related to our products and services.
Networking and Community
How valuable is your membership in the ERA for networking and professional development?
Of course we are proud for having been an ERA member for more than three decades. We very much appreciate the recognizable changes of the ERA approach within the recent years.
What resources or support would you like to see from the ERA to help your business thrive?
A stronger support or advice in terms of ESG requirements would for sure be helpful for all ERA members affected.
“We very much appreciate the
recognizable changes of the ERA approach
within the recent years.”
How do you stay connected and engaged with other professionals in the print industry?
The packaging printing industry is a closed community. Staying connected means for us in the first place to develop the personal relationships we have been fostering with our stakeholders for years. Of course, regular industry events, like hosted by the ERA for example, are offering a perfect networking stage, too.
Future Outlook
What is your outlook for the print industry over the next 5-10 years?
Seeing that gravure printing is facing an essential turnaround of the packaging industry in terms of sustainability, print runs, and portfolio streamlining by the brand owners, the challenges will go on. Automation, digitalization, and more localization of printing tools will also have strong impact just as the higher grade of print technology mix in packaging. Therefore, the advancement in standardization in rotogravure printing would be an enormous progress. Finally, it will be more important than ever to know and understand customers’ requirements and challenges and to commonly work on solutions.
“The challenges will go on.”
Thanks to Janoschka for answering our most pressing questions!
If you would like to be featured in our Member Spotlight series, get in touch with Allan Bendall at members@era-eu.org
