PJL-29

The combination of art and technology has created Fusion Art Embossing®

What are the factors that determine the choice of one tissue product over another? This is an important, recurring question in the marketing departments of companies involved in converting. And the answer is not always simple.

Perini Journal

Surely, within the parameters that determine the choice of a product, we can attribute an important standing to the price factor. But this should not mislead those involved in the converting industry, because in the present market context of product confusion and overcrowding, product visibility and the capability to emerge above the rest in the supermarket aisles become predominant features.

The tissue market has changed substantially in these last few years, and with it, so have consumers’ buying trends – no longer based just on price but also and above all on the emotional factor that the product is able to arouse. Motivations of a psycho-sociological nature, too, concur in influencing product choice. Therefore, offering rolls that evoke a different perception in the consumer – together with the product’s visibility – turns into a substantial competitive advantage capable of guaranteeing a brand’s success.

From these considerations stems Fusion Art Embossing®, an innovative embossing concept fruit of the close collaboration between Fabio Perini S.p.A. and Perini Engraving S.r.l. The two companies, united by the consolidated experience in the production of machines and embossing rolls, respectively, have come to a “rounding of the buoy” considering that today, manufacturing machines and offering technology is acquired data. But proposing new ideas and placing one’s experience at everyone’s disposal becomes an advantageous element for all those involved in the field of converting, a field that is always searching for new tissue product solutions.

The novel concept fuses together creative research and a new way to interpret embossing, with the technology necessary to make a roll. Starting from the indisputable fact that the roll is round (no one has yet made a square one!) innovation passes through the evolution of the systems capable of conferring a different aspect to the final product.

And Fusion Art Embossing® finds a place in this realm. A new “interpretation trend” of the business that highlights a metaphorical vision of production, like a glass that is “half full” and not “half empty”, making innovation a necessary virtue and blending together knowledge, creativity and production.

 

WHAT DISTINGUISHES ONE CONVERTING LINE FROM ANOTHER? The number of logs produced? Today, thanks to existing technology, “it is not difficult” to manufacture a high speed production line for toilet rolls or kitchen towels, or one that yields record performances! But inventing something new becomes an interesting challenge. For this reason, Fusion Art Embossing® constitutes a revolutionary instrument with which it is possible to make décors without “limits” in engravings, conferring a unique and artistic graphic effect to the embossing. A new recipe that mixes, or better yet, merges technical capabilities and technological know-how with creativity, offering a unique and appetizing dish capable of shifting the needle of the scale from volume to value. And the intrinsic and extrinsic value of the product makes the difference.

Let’s imagine we are changing the concept of mere roll or banal commodity to D.O.P. (Protected Denomination of Origin) or D.O.C. (Controlled Denomination of Origin) product. Even though these terms are used in an agricultural/alimentary sense to designate products having a protected or controlled origin, they can also refer to Fusion Art Embossing® rolls: élite products of superior quality and unmistakable identity! Just like the “Slow Food” association protects and valorizes the sense of good cuisine and re-educates drowsy senses, so Fusion Art Embossing® sets the foundations for the creation of a “Slow Tissue”, a movement that defends and protects quality tissue. In a market that today still feels the consequences of the race towards mass or serial production typical of past years and characterized by basically identical products belonging to different suppliers, the capability to intercept and satisfy the public’s needs and expectations – that are often part of the sphere of perceptions – assumes particular importance.

 

RE-DISCOVERING AND REDESIGNING THE CONCEPT OF “KITCHEN TOWEL OR TOILET ROLL”, focusing production in the direction of a unique and inimitable quality, attributing a “cool” aspect to the roll, becomes of primary importance for the survival of the tissue species. And this is possible today thanks to Fusion Art Embossing®! Training consumers to a new approach to the product, helping them recognize quality, valorizing the roll as a decorative, practical object and not just as a mere commodity, will help the entire industrial and connected sectors to safeguard the image of the field, lifting the fate of these products which have now become the Cinderella of supermarkets.

The term “Fusion” was chosen intentionally to clearly and immediately highlight the concept of union between creativity and practical embodiment, keeping in consideration the technical limits posed by the chemical or mechanical production process of a roll. Because not always the ideas of creative individuals can become concrete, even though they may certainly be interesting and innovative. “Fusion” also underscores the combination of different genres, given the possibility of applying this new method to three embossing systems used today: DESL, Point-to-Point and Deco Embossing.

 

THIS NEW EMBOSSING CONCEPT ALLOWS TO OVERCOME THE LIMITS OF ENGRAVING that exist today, introducing a new way of decorating the product and transforming the embossing from a mere decoration to a veritable texture. Hence the use of the term “Art”, to identify and recall the creative and artistic aspect of the new concept given by the combination of rows, points and lines. But what makes Fusion Art Embossing® so revolutionary? Let’s take for example the DESL engraving system, characterized by very schematic abstract designs comprised of points that can be close or far apart, round or square (through the use of conical or pyramid points), used to produce standard, very simple products that we could define as “classical”. The application of the new concept to this type of engraving (DESL) has revolutionized its features, noticeably improving the aesthetics of the final product, giving the possibility of reproducing not abstract designs but décors with distinct, well-defined contours resulting from the intersection of complete lines, segments or points, such as for example an image of fruit.

Surprising results have been obtained also for Point-to-Point products. If up until today, the products obtained through this technique were characterized by a background of square or round points forming a uniform weft that yields the maximum bulk possible, thanks to Fusion Art Embossing®, it is now possible to make patterns that give a pleasant depiction of different subjects. An innovation worthy of notice: the desired volume effect without having to rely on the printing process to embellish the product.

 

AND WHAT ABOUT DECO-EMBOSSED PRODUCTS? The application of the new, revolutionary method to Deco-Embossing – very widely used in these last few years – confers a high added value to the finished product, canceling every limit imposed on the imagination of pattern designers. By varying the thickness of the lines on the wide range of engravings possible, we obtain shading effects of the subjects, so that the texture attains a 3D effect. The added application of neutral or colored glue does not only have a decorative function but also a technical one, in that it makes the plies adhere to one another and defines the closed spaces, thus attributing greater bulk to the finished product.

We can therefore state that Fusion Art Embossing® allows to reproduce graphic images and applications on tissue products that until now were impossible to make due to structural limits in engravings. This new technology may certainly be hailed as an intermediate solution between simple embossing and printing that greatly enhances the final product’s appeal. The advantages of Fusion Art Embossing® are not only aesthetic but also technical and practical. For instance, absorption capacity in kitchen towels and softness in toilet rolls are enhanced. Thanks to the merger of the experience of Perini Engraving S.r.l. and the creativity of Fabio Perini S.p.A., new Fusion Art Embossing® will allow tissue products to shed their Cinderella role and become the protagonists of the supermarket trolley!

This new production “philosophy” unites all the latest innovations in engraving techniques and yields unique, inimitable products, clearly visible on supermarket shelves.

All you have to do now is try it!

 

FortyFive Bubbles® a practical exercise in Fusion Art Embossing®

 

From theory to practice. The kitchen towel product called FortyFive Bubbles®, launched in March of this year by Fabio Perini S.p.A. and KPL Packaging S.p.A. during the “Lucca Event: What a Nice Paper!”, represents a practical example of the new Fusion Art Embossing® technique.

The union of lines, curves and points has given rise to a new roll and the application of colored glue has yielded a different kitchen towel roll, unique and totally new. Novelty is indeed at the basis of the product, designed by the PR/Communications office of Fabio Perini S.p.A., but it was also the link for establishing a marketing and communications campaign aimed at arousing the interest of industry operators to this new product approach.

“Hidden harmony is more powerful than open one” stated Heraclitus. With proper consideration, this concept also synthesizes the idea behind the Fortyfive Bubbles® experiment, that entails the desire to communicate to the converting industry a new way of interpreting the product, where technology is considered its pivot but not its main component. Besides the décor aspect, the company has also catered to all the phases involved in the launch of a new product, such as the name, reference target, packaging, all the way up to the advertisement campaign.

The young generation is the target of FortyFive Bubbles®. It represents a still unexplored cluster with lots of potential, a very appetizing market niche, a group sensitive to innovations and willing to “spend more” for an alternative product (even if we are speaking about a kitchen towel roll!)

Conveyed through an appropriate advertisement campaign and accompanied by a focused merchandising campaign, even a simple product like kitchen towel can become a business instrument. This was the main message that the company wanted to transmit to the converting industry. And this message comes at a time when the field is experiencing a slight sag, but serves to underscore the company’s commitment to enhancing market growth by proposing innovative solutions that anticipate and satisfy the requests of the converting industry, which has recently been suffering from changing market conditions. •

 

Chemical or mechanical engraving?

 

Within the realm of converting technology innovations developed by Perini Engraving S.r.l., we must also highlight the new engraving system for mechanical rolls called Pyramidal Perini Pattern Evolution®, better known as P.P.P. Evolution®. Presented in March during the Tissue World show, this new type of engraving is born to valorize and enhance the potential of mechanically engraved rolls, which have been somewhat set aside following the growing expansion in the use of chemically engraved rolls. The new P.P.P Evolution® represents a valid alternative for those converters interested in attaining a high degree of softness, bulk and compactness without recurring to chemical engraving. Today, the market is more and more oriented towards soft, bulky products. That’s why in these last few years, there has been a rise in the use of chemically engraved rolls to the detriment of mechanically engraved ones, incapable of satisfying market requests because too sharp-cornered. Research carried out recently by Perini Engraving S.r.l. has led the company to overcome these limits and to patent the new P.P.P. Evolution® system, where evolution itself represents the central element.

A technological breakthrough that allows mechanically engraved rolls to unite the elements typical of this process (helix, greater depth of the engraving and hence greater bulk) with the features typical of chemical engraving (mainly softness, given the lack of sharp elements). More harmonious décors may be obtained, yielding a product whose performances are equal or superior to those obtained with a chemically engraved roll.

And as proof of the performance of the new system, a laboratory test compared roll diameter and strength of three different engraving processes: chemical, mechanical and P.P.P Evolution®. The test was carried out by analyzing 2-ply toilet roll products (see Table 1) coming from the same 20.5 gr/ m2 reel; rolls having 60 points/cm2, with windings of 22 m/min.

The advantages of the roll produced using the P.P.P. Evolution® system can be summarized as follows: increase in overall bulk, increase in diameter and greater absorbency with respect to traditional mechanical engravings. To increase the value of this new system is the ability to mechanically engrave double-height rolls, something which until today was feasible only with the chemical system. This further advantage marks the new P.P.P Evolution® technique as a revolutionary and unique system that is not intended to replace chemical engravings but rather represents an alternative. •

Comment:
Login or Register to publish a comment