Packaging

Together with its sponsoring partners, BOBST produced an attractive giveaway of enduring value for drupa 2016, which was also distributed to social institutions.

Friday 23. September 2016 - Thanks to the enthusiastic support of sponsoring partners Druckpartner Essen, Grieger Offsetdruck, Henkel, HESSE Stanzwerkzeuge, KOHLSCHEIN, HANS KOLB Wellpappe, LOHMANN AND FRIENDS and Sappi, BOBST was able to surprise visitors to this year's drupa with a particularly attractive giveaway. This took the form of a beautifully designed memory game that was produced during drupa at the Bobst Competence Centre in Meerbusch, close to the Düsseldorf trade fair.

BOBST invited visitors from around the world, not only to visit the company’s exhibition stand in Hall 10, but also its Competence Centre in Meerbusch, where a FOLIOSTAR sheet-to-sheet laminating machine, NOVACUT 106 ER flat-bed die-cutter with separator and a VISIONFOLD 110 carton folder-gluer with packaging logistics from partner company Impack have been installed for demonstration and training purposes. Over 500 visitors accepted the invitation to come to Meerbusch.

“On the one hand, we asked ourselves how we could present the possibilities opened up by our production workflow in Meerbusch in an attractive way. On the other, we did not want to produce samples, but instead a printed product of lasting value. That is how we came up with the idea of producing a memory game with attractive packaging,” recalls Manfred Wöhning, Head of Technical Field Service and the Competence Centre, looking back on the spring of 2016.

Ultimately, more than 5,000 memory games were produced at Meerbusch, and BOBST distributed at least 1,500 of them to visitors. After drupa, most of the other games were donated to retirement homes, children’s homes, schools or other social institutions.

Druckpartner Essen contributed to the project by printing the packaging; Grieger Offsetdruck printed the playing cards; Henkel supplied the laminating adhesive, the corresponding foaming agent for the laminating machine and the glue for the folder-gluer; HESSE Stanzwerkzeuge provided the die-cutting forms, the “Spit Press” stripping tools without the need for bottom pins, and the patented BSI blanking tools for up to 70 blanks; KOHLSCHEIN contributed a silkboard for the playing cards; HANS KOLB Wellpappe supplied E-flute board for the exterior packaging; LOHMANN AND FRIENDS designed the playing cards and the packaging; and Sappi provided the Fusion topliner for the playing cards and the packaging.

The memory cards stand out for their unusual, highly sophisticated and attractive design. They contain the entire alphabet and the digits from one to nine. The design of the outer packaging is perfectly in harmony with the cards themselves.

The playing cards were made from Eka Silkboard, an uncoated display board produced by KOHLSCHEIN with an extra-smooth surface, light-colored woodpulp interior and a grammage of 625 g/m2. They were then laminated with the FOLIOSTAR using Sappi’s pure white and extremely flat 160-gram Fusion topliner. A high-quality, open E-flute board from HANS KOLB was used for the outer packaging. The FOLIOSTAR was again used to laminate this with the Sappi Fusion topliner, which has a grammage of 180 g/m2. This packaging therefore not only saves on adhesive, but is also lightweight.

The playing cards were printed at size VI with 140 items per sheet, cut in half with a guillotine cutter after lamination, and then die-cut using the NOVACUT. The packaging was printed in sheet format 850 x 550 mm with four blanks per sheet, die-cut with the NOVACUT and then folded and glued using the VISIONFOLD. For both the playing cards and the outer packaging the items were positioned on the sheets in a way that permitted optimum use of the sheet capacity.

Wöhning: “Thanks to the enthusiastic cooperation of our sponsoring partners we were able to achieve exceptionally high quality levels in this project. It is sometimes said that too many cooks spoil the broth, but the opposite was true here. Everyone involved was deeply committed to the project and we are grateful to all of them.”