Introducing Stic Image

Stic Image is unusually located for a label printing works, situated in a residential area close to the heart of the city of Lyon, in France. The company’s owner, Cyrille Roze, has been at the helm of Stic Image since 2015 and in that time has consistently invested in the latest print technologies to maintain a competitive edge in the market.

Roze begins with a brief overview of his business: “The company was founded in 1994, and we are operating on 2,500 square meters, with approximately 40 people working at Stic Image. We are working in three shifts. We are a generalist; I mean we are working with the agro food industry, also on the pharma industry, and we are working a little bit on wine and spirits. Here we supply between 400 and 500 different customers.”

Sustainability is key

This broad customer base, made up of smaller to mid-size companies, is the result of a deliberate strategy to reduce Stic Image’s dependency on fewer, larger clients. However, the ever-sharpening client focus on sustainability is no longer restricted to larger brands alone. It is now a consideration for customers at every level. Roze explains, “Sustainability becomes a very big point of attention for everybody. So we are working on our waste, our energy consumption, what we can save, and our carbon footprint. Recyclability is now probably one of the biggest entry points by our customers. It’s usually the first question that they are asking.

“So it’s more and more important. We are working internally to try to improve our production methods, to decrease our energy consumption, to decrease our material consumption of course, but we are also trying to give good advice to our customers, to provide the right label on the right packaging to enable the recyclability of the packaging.

“I would say that as far as the customers are concerned, they are more concerned about the global carbon footprint of the company. Everything we are doing for the environment is very important for our customers.”

Why GEW?

When Roze took ownership of Stic Image, the majority of the presses were already equipped with GEW systems running conventional UV, as he explains: “All the machines were working with GEW except two. And I have to say that my experience at that time was that we have had quite a lot of problems with the competitors. So when I had to think about changing the system and buying a new machine, I wanted to go for GEW.”

Why ArcLED?

The opportunity to begin to work with UV LED curing technology came when Roze invested in new presses: “Two years ago I bought two production lines, and at that time I wanted also to decrease my energy consumption. The energy prices were very, very high, and then I had to study what kind of system.”

After careful consideration he chose GEW’s interchangeable “ArcLED” systems, which enable UV Arc and UV LED to be run side by side on a press to get the flexibility of using both technologies: “I chose to go with GEW because my experience with GEW was very good, and the second point was what was very important for me is the versatility of the system, because for the varnish and for the colors, we can go back to the UV. After that experience, it showed me that for the colors it was not really a problem, but for the varnish we decided for the moment to stay with the UV system because of the price of the varnish. And here, the versatility of the GEW system is very, very convenient, of course.”

Changing inks

In the beginning, the change to LED was a cause of concern to Christophe Picca, Pressroom Manager at Stic Image, as he explains: “Initially, our concern was mainly about the quality of the inks and maintaining our color profiles. But the supplier reassured us and supported us well on this.”

Roze agrees: “The experience is that it has been no problem. The colors were the same and it was very easy. So much more easy to switch from low migration UV to low migration LED, than switch from non-low migration to low migration. We didn’t change anything. We have perhaps one or two recipes here and there on very light colors that we had to adjust, but it was very, very minimal. As far as the cost and the availability of the inks is concerned, the cost of the inks is not that different, so things have gone in the right direction now and the availability is not a question.”

Why air-cooled AeroLED?

A further reason for Roze’s choice to use air-cooled LED curing, wherever possible, was the apparent ease of installation and the lack of any air conditioning at the Stic Image plant. He notes: “The AeroLED system seemed to be very compact and easy to put on the machine. I have no climatization, so I decided to go for AeroLED because we wanted to decrease the level of heat in the factory, but also we wanted to decrease the level of noise and as far as we had already in place all the extraction systems, we didn’t have anything to do to connect the AeroLED system to our presses.”

LED cost savings and ROI

Ultimately, Roze’s intention is to switch entirely to UV LED and to eliminate any conventional curing, as he explains: “We still have a mercury system on the finishing line, but of course we will switch to LED because we want – at the end of the day – to work only with one range of ink. The experience we have with the LED… we did the savings on the energy part, it’s at the scale of our company – 15% of energy savings – which is impressive and which was very important for the payback of the system.”

Combining the switch to LED with other efficiency initiatives has brought significant savings for the company, as Roze outlines: “Clearly our intention is to go for 100% LED. We want to be full LED. We are still waiting for the price of the varnish to decrease, which is starting to be the case and I think it’s a question of months to do the switch. With the same volume of production, I changed the LED system and I changed the lights of the warehouse. I think I saved something like 120 to 130 megawatt hours per year, we will save about 30,000 Euros per year. With the energy savings that we see now with the system, I think the payback will be around three years.”

Versatility and increased productivity

Roze also points to the simplicity of working with LED: “The system is very easy to use. It’s stable. It’s on-off, so you always get the same quality. You don’t have to change the lamp, you don’t have a decrease of performance of the lamp, so it’s very, very comfortable to use for the operators. And I don’t hear about the system, which is a good thing!”

With the benefit of hindsight, Roze now looks back and smiles about his earlier apprehension when making the move to LED: “I had a lot of questions before… the complexity, the inks, the colors, and the real savings. It was a difficult decision for me to take. With time I see that, in fact, this project has been very easy. The installation was quick and the system is easy to use – no problem with the color, we have the savings, so I was a little bit afraid of doing that investment and now I’m very happy. I studied this decision two years ago, and it was very important to have feedback from people that have done this change. It was very important to also feel that the ink suppliers are ready. There is less problem with the varnish and at the same time we have had this very high price of electricity increase, and for me, that was the right time to do it.

“For me, I see that of course it’s a very good investment.”

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For further information on GEW’s next generation, higher power, air-cooled UV LED curing system, AeroLED2, visit  www.gewuv.com/aeroled2