SOS-PACKAGING · A novel flexographic printing machine for correcting or customising over already printed packaging designs

Annually more than 23,750km or 600tons of packaging on reels is rendered obsolete unusable and destined for landfills. Three main reasons account for why packaging becomes obsolete. A discontinu-ation of a product & its packaging causes its packaging in-stock to be of no use. Also, legislation when changed can disqualify existing packaging rendering it unusable. In addition, Printing errors make the packaging unsuitable for use. When this happens, this obsolete packaging has to be replaced with new packaging incurring more costs through reprinting. Over 40years, ROTOPRINT has recovered 950000 km of obsolete packaging by printing over already printed packaging formats in a process called over-printing. However current high fixed costs of overprinting are threatening its viability to recycle obso-lete packaging. The Flexible packaging market, valued at €196 billion in 2017, is expected to reach a value of €248 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 3.86% validating the growing market demand for overprint-ing as larger volumes to be obsolete with increase in market size. SOS-Packaging, our innovation, is a unique overprinting technology which reuses obsolete (e.g misprinted) packaging material to produce a new and fresh adequate packaging with either errors eliminated, or customisations added in line with client specifications or prevailing regulations. It is 230% faster than our previous process at Rotoprint; reduces polution to land fills; saves 60% on reprinting costs by printing over obsolete material, fixed costs are 90% less because it uses rubber rollers instead of metal ones and its waterbased inks are ecofriendly. SOS-Packaging reduces CO2 emissions because it eliminates energy spent in producing new material when the obsolete can be reused. Through SOS-Packaging we will save companies reprinting costs while generating €21M in sales, €7M in profits and create employ-ment opportunities for hiring 27 employees.