GEW’s latest case study focuses on Auraprint Oy, a label printer based in Turku, Finland. Auraprint have a rich history, having been formed in 1886 as a newspaper printer. Over 135 years later, the company is still going strong and is owned by the fourth generation of the same family who founded the business. Auraprint have 95 employees and a turnover of around €18 million, and the company continues to stay ahead of the competition by investing in new technology yearly.
This in part explains Auraprint’s evolution over the past century. They have evolved away from newspapers and towards continuous form, sheetfed and label printing. Labelling became a more prominent focus when they bought their first flexo press in the 1980s. Whilst flexo printing of labels and sleeves is now the company’s primary business, they do still use offset printing processes for wet glue labels for the forestry industry.
Auraprint is continuously evolving, as is demonstrated by their recent investment in GEW UV LED systems. This was driven by a desire to be a greener organisation, and their investment in UV LED did not stop at curing systems – they also changed their entire factory lighting to LED, which has led to savings of nearly €4000 per month.
Mika Lehtimäki is the Technical and Product Development Manager at Auraprint. He initially joined the company in 1996 as a printer, but soon began to progress. He took the role of Shift Manager in 2003 before promotion to the role of Technical Manager in 2008. The secondary role in product development soon followed, which resulted in Mika becoming responsible for all equipment purchasing, including the investment in the company’s first GEW UV LED curing systems.
The investment consisted of 48 LED cassettes, which are a mixture of GEW’s UV LED systems… water-cooled LeoLED, and air-cooled AeroLED. These are installed across their five flexo machines, which are an MPS EFA+530, a Bobst M6 and a Nilpeter FA4. The initial investment began in 2019, however, when Auraprint purchased two LeoLED cassettes for their MPS machine, with the intention of testing how UV LED could be used in their current processes.
Mika admits that Auraprint originally expected plenty of work to be involved in their transition to UV LED, but notes that they were pleasantly surprised by the speed of the process: “For us, we expected the transition to UV LED to be arduous and time-consuming, particularly with changing our printing-ink profiles. The reality was totally different though. Auraprint Production Foreman Sami Korhonen worked closely with Sun Chemical to ensure we had the correct inks in place to work with our new GEW cassettes. The process of printing-ink changeover took around six weeks –we were expecting it to take months, so this was very positive for us.
“GEW were helpful throughout as well, working with our team and the Sun Chemical team to ensure the chemistry was successful. This left us in a position where we were confident enough to change all our machines over to UV LED, meaning that we run 100% UV LED now. What surprised us even more was that we can now use LED on our varnishes – this was initially something we were told could be years away, but we have the capability in-house, meaning we never touch our mercury arc lamps anymore.”
This switch to LED, particularly with the varnishes, has allowed them to take positive steps forward in their production, with UV LED becoming the norm across all their work: “For our label work, we always expected UV LED to become the number one curing method for us, once we had our colour matches in-line with our previous processes. However, to be able to use LED with our varnishes for the gloss finishing work we do, and even with the technical varnishes we use for booklet labels, is a real game changer for us. This saves even more time on press as we no longer need to switch out our LED lamps for the mercury arc ones on our varnish stations, meaning our make ready times are markedly reduced.”
Mika is similarly upbeat in his praise of the newer technology: “In simple terms, our production speeds have increased by 20%. We’re also seeing much better cure of dark printing-ink, which has led to customers being even more satisfied with the products they receive.
“We also see a better opacity with LED white and we’re saving ink too. To be more specific, we now no longer need to apply opaque white on two print units, we can just use one, so we have effectively gained a print station.
“There are less obvious benefits that slowly add up as well. There’s minimal maintenance and cleaning with UV LEDs, particularly compared to traditional arc lamps, which is a big time saver and means we can spend more time in production. We see the benefit of this in our machine operators who can get on with the printing aspect of their jobs much quicker.”
Mika also believes Auraprint are seeing lower costs, overall: “The UV LED inks cost a little more, which I know many printers worry about, but the aniloxes are a bit finer and because the curing is more efficient, consumption is less, so it’s cost neutral overall.
“But the biggest benefit is in energy savings. We estimate that we save around 15-20% on total energy costs per year, compared to the costs if we still had conventional UV-lamps curing.”
When asked whether he has considered going back to conventional forms of curing, Mika was clear: “The switch to UV LED is something we’re committed to. It’s a change we’ve seen so many benefits from, including faster and better curing, less maintenance and lower overall costs. At this stage, printers are missing out if they are not curing with LED.”
Learn more about GEW’s UV LED curing systems here. – https://www.gewuv.com/products/led-uv-systems/
To contact Auraprint directly, visit their website at: www.auraprint.fi
