In 1980, at the tender age of 25, Tom O’Brien launched a commercial printing firm in North Carolina called AccuLink. Partly because the business was an early and eager adopter of digital printing technologies, it grew and prospered. But by 2014 AccuLink, like most commercial printers, was in serious decline, their business eroded by various online platforms that reduced the need for direct mail, posters, brochures, and other printed products on which commercial printers had long depended.
AccuLink was rescued in 2015 when it reinvented itself by becoming a fulfillment house for digitally printed web-to-print items: coffee mugs, mouse pads, personalized cards, blankets, Christmas ornaments, and so on. By this time O’Brien had plenty of digital printing systems from HP Indigo, but none of his business activity had anything to do with packaging. Not that he didn’t want it to. “By 2019 I knew I was missing out by not being involved in packaging, and I wanted to be in it so bad I couldn’t see straight,” he recalls. “But I just didn’t have any experience in packaging, which I felt was absolutely essential. So I chose to say no.”
The electron beam coating and laminating system is one of several strategic investments in machines, methods, and materials that AccuFlex opted for as a way of scoring sustainable packaging points.
