Digital Printing with a Tour de France Theme

A limited-edition lemon & lime Sports Hydration Mix salutes the team jersey, each in a unique designgenerated with HP Mosaic print technology.

The all-digital flexible packaging print provider ePac Flexible Packaging printed the resealable pouches using the HP Indigo 20000 Digital Press and HP SmartStream Mosaic automated variable design software.

“ePac has been a great packaging partner for the past two years,” says Elliott Freeman, Vice President of Marketing at Skratch Labs. “They came to us with an opportunity to do a short-run packaging design using an HP technology that gives each package its own unique twist on our design. We jumped at the chance to highlight one of our key partners—EF Pro Cycling team—and their breakthrough jersey design for a limited-edition packaging run. The whole thing came together from idea to reality in three months, just in time for the Tour de France. Cycling fans are going crazy for it.”

This represents ePac’s first HP Mosaic project. The limited edition of 10,000 unique pouches was produced at the firm’s Boulder, CO, site, one of six now operating in the US. ePac is expanding internationally with sites in the U.K. and Vancouver, Canada opening later this year.

HP SmartStream Mosaic is an algorithm that automatically generates a high number of unique graphic patterns from a seed design by randomly transforming a master artwork file, rotating, transposing, interchanging colors, and amplifying the design anywhere.

“HP SmartStream Mosaic is an extremely powerful tool,” says Carl Joachim, CMO of ePac Flexible Packaging. “This project is a fantastic demonstration of how sporting team sponsors can use their logos and designs to develop unique items for fans to get into the team spirit and save as collectors’ items.”

For the EF Pro Cycling special edition package, Skratch Labs and ePac worked together to implement a design theme that would represent EF Pro Cycling team’s racing jerseys. The idea was to use the Rapha jersey design and team patterns to create a package that would commemorate the team, a top contender at this year’s Tour de France. “With HP Mosaic software and our ability to create special metallized effects without metallized inks, we created 10,000 amazing and unique packages,” adds Dustin Steerman, Managing Partner of ePac Boulder.

The 30-in. (76 cm) HP Indigo 20000 can print virtually any sized flexible packaging application with unlimited variation and support demand for growing SKUs, alongside benefits of reduced waste from minimal setup and production of only the quantities needed. The solution provides converters the freedom to produce nearly any flexible packaging application, in addition to labels and shrink sleeves, on film or paper—all with the proven quality to help meet strict brand requirements.

For a whole lot more on the latest in package printing, be sure to visit the PACKage Printing Pavilion at PACK EXPO Las Vegas 2019, where the focus will be on the advantages of digital printing showcasing the latest in cost-effective solutions for smart, short-run, on-demand, cost-effective, variable data, and personalized packaging.