The market for CD and DVD media discs is growing rapidly. While the sales of music CDs are declining in many parts of the world, other parts of the world are growing significantly – the most significant movie DVD. However, the fastest growing is a writable CD. The worldwide demand for copying files in various formats to media discs has driven up the sales of writeable CDs. Brands like Philips, TDK and Imation are now household names. The demand for CD-ROMs in the entire world market is 45 billion per year, and it is also growing at a rate of 22%. This will continue to increase at this rate in the next few years.
When these CD-ROM products were initially marketed, their packaging was dominated by rigid plastic boxes. Over the years, this has been used as an industry standard. However, many new ideas and technological innovations have been introduced into the disc packaging market in recent years, and people are trying to find another alternative packaging form. Now, this solution has been developed: it can provide the protection needed for optical discs and promote content more effectively; at the same time, it can also provide environmentally-friendly solutions by using natural, recyclable raw materials.
The solution opener is Stora Enso Group, one of the world's top paper and paperboard companies. Stora Enso has 44,000 employees in more than 40 countries and total sales of approximately €12.4 billion. Its annual output of paper and paperboard exceeds 16 million tons, and sawn and processed wood products are produced more than 7.7 million cubic meters annually.
In early 2000, research and development began to dawn, making it possible to provide the necessary protection and visual effects for disc packaging. At the same time, the demand for small-batch packaging shows an increasing trend, so digital printing technology was introduced into the research and development work to start testing. These trials were conducted at Stora Enso's Imatra plant, one of the most important research and development bases for consumer cardboard products.
Digital printing
Related experiments conducted at Innocenti further incorporated digital printing technology into existing DBS packaging machines. These tests were conducted by Stora Enso and Xeikon International Co. after the end of 2004. The results of the test are hopeful. Xeikon International Corporation is one of the top producers of digital printing machines and holds 40% of the shares in this cooperation. Its expertise in digital presses, coupled with Stora Enso's superiority in R&D and packaging knowledge, provides a good opportunity for the development of full-scale production concepts.
One of the main purposes of this cooperation is to conduct R&D work for the sale of fully contracted production systems. The full contract production system enables the printing of large or small media packages made entirely of paper and cardboard. Now that the system has been fully developed, it offers simple production - the fully packaged product can be exported after the roll paper board is input. The production line is fully automatic and the printing unit is connected to the cutting and creasing device. The only manual operation is to transport the cut blank to a specially designed filling machine so that it automatically fits the booklet and the CD into the sliding tray of the CD case.
The DBS box production process begins with the unwinding of a 5m wide web with a diameter of 1.25m. The 400-micron-thick 350g/m2 special cardboard EnsoglossDBS was input into the Xeikon 5000 digital press. The printed paperboard with an image resolution of 600dpi was printed. The press is equipped with a One-Pass-DuplexTM device that can perform double-sided printing at a time. The system-developed software can perform image processing and can also be equipped with various additional equipment. For example: You can add different information to each individual box to change the software settings in order to create a personalized package. Recently, a separate address was used on the 47,000 DBS trays printed for Belgian Yellow Pages to use them directly as postal parcels without the need for labelling.
This feature greatly increases the flexibility of the printing, it is easy to achieve the address library and the entire design process, and the operation is simple. After printing, the cardboard is directly input into the DBS carton forming machine and is automatically cut and indented. To ensure that production is not interrupted during the printing and die-cutting stages, a buffer is installed between the two processes. The DBS molding machine is also equipped with a UV flexo unit and a curing unit for the UV coating of the required board. The cardboard is die-cut and then stacked and transferred to the filling machine. The waste from the die-cutting process is simply rolled into a roll for easy placement.
New market
The optical disc market is expanding and is always looking for new uses. The ability to use digital printing to effectively manage short-lived jobs has greatly expanded the market development space. In addition, the additional advantages of personalized independent packaging have also expanded the market development space. The packaging of promotional CDs is clearly one of the main areas of use of DBS. With the increasing use of computers, projects such as company reports, engineering manuals, direct mail, and most electronic business communications will all be replaced with CDs in the future. This space for development is endless, and it can provide a cardboard-based solution, and environmental issues are also handled very well. One of the main advantages of DBS packaging is high quality printing. It can use 5-color printing and glazing processes, and its print quality and finishing effect far outweigh the traditional CD box.
StoraEn Media Solutions offers a large number of packages for writeable CD brands. This took place at the Hungarian Executive Centre, where the writable CD-R or DVD-R discs were packaged in a compact, environmentally-friendly DBS package. The first brand to use DBS was Imation, which launched "Ecopack" in the UK, France, Spain and Germany this summer. One of the main advantages of the DBS carton is that it can be directly labeled on the package, and it is also convenient for mailing.
The DBS box is a space-saving package that will greatly save the company's storage space. Twenty thousand traditional CD boxes occupy 5 to 9 cubic meters of space, while the same number of packages using paper DBS boxes only occupy 1 cubic meter. In addition, the weight difference between the two is also worth mentioning. Twenty thousand ordinary CD cases with compact discs and booklets weigh approximately 1800 kilograms, while the corresponding DBS carton weighs 700 kilograms, a reduction of approximately 60%. In many areas (such as promoting CD packaging), this can save supply chain costs.
Another important advantage of the DBS carton is that it is not easily broken. Almost everyone has the experience of accidentally dropping a plastic CD case, which usually breaks the CD case in half or breaks. This does not happen with the DBS tray, so it protects the CD very well. Mr. Tommola added: “The benefits of this product have given us great encouragement. We believe that people will see a significant increase in the proportion of packaging discs using natural renewable resources. The package offers advantages such as: higher quality The image, short liveness, personalization, space saving, and cost are becoming increasingly important. With DBS packaging, we are ready and able to meet market demands."
Source: PACK.CN