Having secured Esko full HD Flexo certi cation, NDigitec is building its premedia presence with its new NDigitec Premedia department, says CEO Vatche Kavlakian
While claiming the status of the Middle East’s first prepress bureau with Esko full HD Flexo certification, Dubai-based NDigitec is extending its digital flexo platemaking expertise by setting up a premedia offshoot.
PMEA:How has NDigitec developed its expertise in premedia?
VK: Regarding premedia, this has been one of the sectors we have been concentrating on for about 10 years. Encapsulated in pre-press activity we
have been giving this service to our customers and especially brand owners
and advertising agencies. So now recently in 2015 we made a decision to emphasise more investment on premedia built into our prepress. So the first thing we did, we called our division NDigitec Premedia. We added premedia to our division and, second thing, we created a specialised section to handle premedia jobs.
CEO Vatche Kavlakian highlighted to Packaging MEA how the company has gone “one more step higher” in digital flexo platemaking.
HD Flexo is seen as the new standard for flexo quality, he said. Companies that are HD Flexo certified are among the best in their field, constantly innovating to offer the very best in flexo quality.
Full HD Flexo involves adding
perfect ink laydown with the right solid density, vibrant brand colours, supreme platemaking consistency, and the only fully digitally controlled platemaking workflow available in industry, he said.
Through full HD flexo platemaking, flexo can now compete with gravure and offset in flexible packaging, labels and corrugated printing applications, he claimed.
PMEA: How does premedia differ in its functions from prepress?
VK:Prepress is rerographics plus plate making. Premedia is actually reprographics according to next media level, next media requirement. There are two different
target customers. We are targeting flexible packaging printers, corrugated, label and flexible packaging printers, narrow-wide web. In premedia, our target is direct brand owners, and advertising agencies, creative agencies as well as print buyers.
So in this regard we did a lot of experimentation technology-wise, fundamental-wise, human resources-wise, and our standards of course.
We are using our same old NDHD platform, in combination with the latest technology available in the market. We have our own R&D and our own way to do the business and quality control. Plus now we have a new approach on new segmentation, to approach the brand owner requirements and to get the benefits of our value chain. And besides we also have our added value chain division such as X60, while digital printing will support premedia to fulfil target consumers and multinational requirement.
PMEA: What is your strategy for approaching brand owners that now rely on an agency for their premedia work?
VK:We are not trying to play the role of an advertising agency or creative agency. We are a creative production solutions provider. The most important service we are giving
is that we are a creative production and our old division is serving the customer and graphic art industries to fulfil the creative production requirement.
That means with our all value chain, we can support different kinds of target customers, especially brand owners and multinationals that we can fulfil their creative production requirement. Of course, each one of them has in-house premedia. But premedia is a much wider service which you can find with us as a professional prepress, pre-photography and plate makers and we know how to handle each different customer requirement.
That’s why premedia supported with other value chain, other activities of NDigitec will be a perfect channel to serve brand owners, advertising agencies and multinationals.
So we have to emphasise that we are not a creative agency. We are not acting like that. We are acting to translate people’s brands creativity to production. Prepress is a part of that. Premedia is a part of that. CGI is part of that. Digital printing is part of that. Proofing is part of that.
PMEA: Can you give an example of how this works in practice?
VK:For example, X water company, they have their own design agency, international or local, and we are the one-stop shop for the production services. We can handle this job from A to Z. We can start with preparation with advice, with premedia, preparing, resizing, modifying, Arabic modification
jobs can be done in prepress and premedia until providing the plates for the printer where he is going to print this job. We can support with X60 assets for brand owners and ad agencies to create 3D assets for the products. Instead of photography you’ll have 3D assets you can render according to the next step requirements and also our digital printing section, stand printing section, they will work to provide solutions for target customers.