FFEI is poised to launch its RealPro Toolkit at the Gulf Print & Pack show in April as it seeks to wrest market share from Esko in the Middle East. Packaging is “critically undersupplied” in software and is “crying out for a choice”, said commercial manager Charlie Seccombe.
“With Esko so strong in the market, and they are almost the only supplier, the market is crying out for a choice, options,” he told Packaging MEA.
“We are not looking to replace any Esko product but trying to offer alternatives so that customers can make a more informed choice of what they actually want.”
FFEI will offer trials and evaluation time as part of its strategy to take on Esko, he said.
“This [packaging] is an area of the market that’s critically undersupplied and has yet to make the full move for the digital transformation,” he said.
“Commercial print is almost completely digitalised but actually packaging isn’t. So from the market opportunity for a developer company such as ours, I think the timing is absolutely perfect.”
FFEI products launched at Drupa 2012, such as the overview3D Packager product and a packager toolkit, are now becoming commercially available after successful trials, he added.
“The feedback we have had from our customer trials has been excellent,” he said.
‘I’ve been to see a number of customers in the UK and am absolutely amazed by the reaction from them. To suggest that they were basically biting my hand off to get hold of the product is not an exaggeration! So we’re absolutely confident that the market is waiting for this product.”
In the Gulf, where the company is distributed by AGE Graphics, FFEI also sees potential from existing installations, added managing director Andy Cook.
‘The Gulf region is an important market for FFEI, having established a large installed base of Violet CTP over the past 10 years, and so we decided Gulf Print & Pack would be a great place to showcase our new label and packaging solutions,” he said.
FFEI will demonstrate the new RealPro Toolkit live at the AGE Graphics stand. Since debuting RealPro at Drupa, FFEI has responded to feedback by unbundling packages to offer more flexible solutions, he said.