Esko-Graphics shows DeskPack at IppStar Roundtable in Delhi

Eskographics meets packaging stalwarts at the first IppStar Roundtable 19May03

by Sharad Gupta

It finally happened. The first ever IPP Star Roundtable was held on the 7th of May at New Delhi's India Habitat Centre. The Roundtable was hosted by Eskographics who are the leaders in software for digital workflow and prepress applications for packaging and was a resounding success if the calibre of the audience and their reactions post the Roundtable is anything to go by.

Amongst the over 35 participants at the Star Roundtable were, Vasant Goel of Gopsons, Amila Singhvi of International Print-O-Pac, Sanjeev Khemka of Khemka Containers, Tariq Hussain of Express Colourscan, Gururaj Kirsur of DuPont, Deepak Manchanda of Packaging Solutions Group, Vijay Raghavan of Sai Security, Rajiv Bhargava of HBD, Rakhee Singh, EE Raj, and S Chowdhury of EIH Press, Rajiv Oberoi of Shilp Gravures, Rajeev Batra of Surya Print Process and Sandeep Jain of Vipin Packaging.

Converters listen to Antony Conway's presentation of DeskPack

Naresh Khanna, editor, Indian Printer, kicked off the event and Publisher, with a formal welcome to the attendees and a brief note of introduction for Antony Conway, the Singapore based Productivity Consultant for Esko-Graphics in the Asia Pacific region. In his welcome note Mr Khanna enumerated the charter for Star, the ground it has covered so far and the future direction. Of specific interest was the fact that Star now has six members, Express Colourscan, Gopsons Printers, International Print-O-Pac, Sai Security Printers, Creed Engineers and the latest member, Esko-Graphics. Mr Khanna also noted the contributions made by the donors and supporters such as Adobe, Agfa, Best Color, Epson, HP, Oris, and Quark. The audience was also interested to know about the progress made on the industry survey being conducted by Star, which has sponsors such as NPES, IPAMA, Heidelberg, KPG, and Manugraph.

After delivering his welcome note Mr Khanna handed over the dais to Srihari K Rao, Sales Manager, South Asia who in turn gave a detailed introduction to Antony Conway, describing him as an old India hand who has seen the Indian market evolve over the years. Mr. Conway amplified that view and commended the Indian packaging market for having matured so rapidly over recent years. He however specified that a lot remains to be done and that a number of jobs that are currently done in a labour intensive and less than optimum quality manner need to move to a technology intensive high quality environment. Mr. Conway made a presentation on Supply Chain Management in Packaging and illustrated the dynamic nature of the interactions that have to take place between brand owners, packaging developers, structural and graphic designers, and the prepress, proofing, sampling, and production environments. He suggested that this is also an area for software based production management and workflow and collaborative tools.

Mr. Conway then went on to talk in detail about the advances in packaging prepress and its application in the Indian packaging prepress environment. He spent considerable time showing the audience the technical advancements in packaging prepress technologies such as Esko-Graphics' DeskPack that works as an Illustrator plug-in. trapX performs several of the most important packaging functions such as automated trapping using the ColorStitch engine. The compute-intensive calculations take place on a PC based server while the Mac or PC based clients use the new packaging plug-in tools from inside Adobe Illustrator. DeskPack also includes checkX for file inspection, adaptation, and checking, and boostX meant for efficient colour and object selection, creation, and alignment and styling tools for packaging design. Conway made the point that 80 per cent of packaging prepress is still done using simple desktop tools that require huge chunks of skills, effort and time without providing the consistency and finesse of the expensive heavy duty packaging systems. Much if not all of this work can be productively streamlined using DeskPack tools within the familiar Adobe Illustrator desktop environment.

The Roundtable discussion ended with a quick question and answer session where members of the audience wanted to know more about the specific aspects of the packaging prepress technology that Mr Conway talked about. The participants then moved to an informal discussion format over drinks and dinner.

That the Roundtable was a success is borne out by the fact that the participants went away not only satisfied but also suggested that such get-togethers be made a regular activity. Given the fact that Star Technology Roundtables are designed keeping in mind the oft-expressed need from members and the industry at large for a platform for interaction where the latest cutting edge products and technology trends can be discussed in minute detail, the first such Roundtable seems to have delivered on that expectation.