Borrowing technology from ceramic tiles to brand caps

Chicago — Italian machinery company Sacmi Imola SC serves the plastics, food and ceramic tile manufacturing sectors. And typically the businesses don't have a lot in common.

But there's an exception: The company's Colora Cap technology.

The Imola, Italy-based company gave an update on Colora Cap at the Plastics Caps & Closures conference in Chicago, sponsored by Plastics News.

The technology allows companies to print high-definition digital images onto products, like plastic caps. There are no changeover costs, each cap can have a custom decoration, and the machine is capable of producing 600 22-millimeter caps per minute.

The images can be printed in high resolution, even on colored caps, according to Marco Ferri, key account and area sales manager for closures and containers.

“Almost an unlimited number of images can be printed, 600 caps a minute with 600 different images,” Ferri said. “Imagine the marketing that can be achieved with this machine. How to best exploit the potential of digital? I'm not in marketing, but the first thing that comes to mind is promotion for a sports event.”

Sacmi presented information about Colora Caps at the 2014 Plastics Caps & Closures conference, too. This time Ferri was able to disclose that the machine has been commercialized.

“We are on the market. We are already printing a 38-mm closure for dairy, and 38-mm for carbonated soft drinks,” he said. Customers are using the machines to print on both white and colored closures, he said.

In addition, he gave more background about how the company's plastics business benefited from the ceramic tile business to print this product to market.

“Sacmi makes complete plants to make ceramic tiles. Big tiles that look like marble, granite, any other rock, but they're made from ceramic. They're very popular. How do they do it? Digital printing,” Ferri said.

“So we have a long know-how in digital printing coming from this ceramic tile business. So we thought it would be a great solution to use this know-how in digital printing in packaging.”

Sacmi is marketing the technology with the tagline “No limit to imagination,” highlighting the flexibility of the equipment.

Colora Cap was developed by Intesa, the Sacmi Group company specializing in the design and marketing of machines for digital decoration in the ceramics, food and plastics sectors.

The equipment uses special low-migration inks supplied by Agfa. Ferri said the company may add other ink suppliers.

Ferri said Sacmi offers the equipment as part of a complete cap transport system, including heating, plasma surface treatment, corona treatment, digital decorating and drying.