Narrow investments balance wider portfolio
Wide format specialist, Flower City, invests in flexography and digital, expanding its business platform for efficiency and service needs writes Danielle Jerschefske
Flower City Printing in Rochester, New York got its start in 1970 as a commercial printer in the offset world servicing the consumer-facing manufacturing firms in the upstate New York area. As the business grew and evolved to meet the various needs of the company’s broad customer base, a decision was eventually made to invest in a wide format 55in KBA Planeta to print cut and stack labels. This investment effectively guided a successful path forward in the larger display and POP markets.
Today Flower City continues to print a wide variety of work in the food and beverage markets, for national retail chains and consumer product companies, holding strong to its niche capacity to produce displays, labels, folding cartons, kit-packing & fulfillment, POP materials and garment tags.
President Bill Oliveri explains: ‘In this way our customers deal with one point rather than multiple allowing them the flexibility to easily obtain efficient and speedy production no matter what volume, type and size of product they require.’
In reaction to the market evolution demanding shorter runs of printed materials more frequently, the converter has strategically adopted the use of new and narrower technology to maintain a profitable business model. It has also invested in a complex internally developed software system that streamlines the scheduling and production of these various materials.
'The Caslon supports effective production of lower quantities while keeping cost down, and we don’t have to compromise with the quality'
Narrow web expansion
Flower City first invested in flexography a couple years ago with the addition of an eight-color 13in Nilpeter FB press. Since then the converter has experienced significant growth within its flexographic business in two key ways.
Firstly by pulling offset work from the wider sheet fed presses for efficiency in production. ‘A lot of our existing work fits flexo better,’ explains Oliveri. ‘We are also expanding and capturing new business with more work suited to flexo from our current customer base.’
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