1. T
ap Packaging Solutions, a 110-
year-old US company based in
Cleveland, Ohio, was among the
first to install an HP Indigo
30000 digital press. The addition of digital
printing is expanding the folding carton and
rigid box converter’s value proposition to
customers and providing a variety of new
opportunities. The company can now
produce high quality folding cartons in
shorter more frequent runs for health and
beauty companies, confectioners, food and
beverage manufacturers and high-end
retailers.
“We needed a short run solution. We
knew there were a lot of things that this
press could do that traditional efficient short
run litho couldn’t,” says Tony Hyland,
President & CEO. “The HP 30000 serves
our premium packaging market, customers
who are looking for something unique.
Installing one of the first presses has been a
big advantage. This has been a showpiece
for us.”
The 29-inch format press is an offset-
matching sheetfed solution that features
zero setup, minimal waste and easy
versioning capabilities, enabling Tap to print
multiple designs at any run length making it
an ideal solution for re-designs, seasonal
packaging and point-of-sale campaigns,
says Jordana Revella, Vice President, Sales
and Marketing. Tap began running full
production runs on the press in January.
Tap Packaging is exploring new
ways to leverage its new HP
30000 digital press.
By Jackie Schultz
36 Folding Carton Industry. September/October 2015
INVESTING
INDIGITAL
From left, Matt Moir, Jordana Revella,
Brittany Vazquez and Ken Meffert

2. The Perfect Job
The timing of the press installation was quite
fortuitous for one local customer whose
packaging needs were perfectly suited to
digital printing’s value proposition, such as
small volume runs, quick turnaround and no
tooling costs. Tap Packaging is helping Chill
Pop, a local startup, launch its line of
organic popsicles. The two companies
began working together earlier this year on
the design and production of cartons for
Chill Pop’s debut in Whole Foods, a
supermarket chain that specializes in
organic food.
The founders of Chill Pop contacted Tap
Packaging after learning that the company
won a Gold award in the 2014 Paperboard
Packaging Council design competition for
Inca tea boxes. “We really liked the
packaging for Inca Tea,” says Elizabeth
Pryor, one of the founders of Chill Pop.
“Being committed to local food, we like to
work as much as we can with local
companies. We had read a little bit about
Tap and they were on our short list of who
we wanted to reach out and connect with.
We set up the meeting and it was excellent
to work with them right from the start.
Brittany Vazquez, Tap Packaging designer,
had a sample for us to look at in a few days
so we went into the meeting with Whole
Foods with a great mockup of a carton.”
There are six flavors of Chill Pop
popsicles, each with a different package
design. Four of the flavors — watermelon,
strawberry, kiwi, and lemon — are being
distributed in Whole Foods stores across
the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., while
two of the flavors — avocado and plum —
are exclusive to a new store opening in the
Cleveland area this fall. Order volumes for
each of the four mass distributed flavors are
2,356. Volumes for the two flavors for the
local store are 288 each.
Tap Packaging produced all of the
cartons on the HP 30000. “Because they
have six versions, and two are in test market
phase, the HP made complete sense,”
Revella says. “With the HP there are no
plates and we don’t have to gang run a job
to get all of the versions into one print run.
That means each of the versions can be
printed with their own quantity. It also
means that for their next run, when they
have sales data guiding their run quantities,
we can easily increase Watermelon to say
7,000, and change strawberry to 4,000 and
plum to 3,500 without having to change
layouts and without having to create new
plates. It also means they have flexibility in
testing out new flavors without having to
commit to large quantities.”
The tuck top autobottom cartons are
printed four-color plus coating on 18 pt
SBS. “We were going for something that
looked more natural and artisan,” Pryor
says. “It’s a faux kraft so it has the kraft look,
but it’s printed versus actually being kraft
paper.”
Pryor says she and her partner, Maggie,
were pleased with the final look of the
cartons. “Prior to meeting with Tap we had
done a lot of due diligence. We had been up
and down the freezer aisles and had bought
our competitor’s packaging. Everyone else
had photography. We knew that from the
consumer psychology standpoint people
choose and buy with their eyes and need to
see the product, but for us the photography
felt too commercial. That’s why we went
with the fruit and popsicle icons which are a
huge part of our brand. We wanted to be
different and stand out as more natural,
artisan and premium.”
New Markets
Tap Packaging is exploring ways to leverage
the capabilities of digital printing. The new
HP 30000 has an in-line Tresu coater. It can
print a 29½ x 20½ -inch sheet and can handle
any substrate from 8 to 24 pt. The company
recently had white ink installed. The press
can print on metallic, kraft and foil board.
Ken Meffert, press operator, says it
takes about 10 to 15 minutes to run 1,300
sheets and there is no makeready and no
on-press waste. According to HP, the press
saves up to 250 tons of paperboard waste
per year and up to 200,000 sq ft of plate
material.
All of Tap’s stock box jobs have been
transferred to the HP. “It was more cost-
effective to move the stock lines over to the
HP,” Revella says. “It frees up time on our
traditional presses for the larger runs.”
The volume delineation between offset
and digital is about 7,000. Moving shorter
run jobs to the HP has opened up more
capacity on the company’s Heidelberg
press. “We were setting up the press two
hours and eight minutes for every one hour
we were running,” Hyland says. “Many of
those jobs were appropriate for the HP.”
Revella says more customers are placing
shorter run orders, especially when
launching a new product. “They just don’t
want to commit to 10,000 pieces. They
38 Folding Carton Industry. September/October 2015
INVESTINGINDIGITAL
The packaging for Chill Pop’s line of organic popsicles was printed on the new HP.

3. this capability you can run variable
data and every carton can be
different. You can put different
names on different packages. When
you’re thinking about a brand owner
marketing his products in different
demographics, different target
markets, you’re not limited by the
boundaries of traditional printing. Every
carton does not have to be the same. You
can target your packaging directly to that
specific market. For example, if you’re
running an ad for your over the counter
vitamins in Men’s Health in O magazine,
you’re going to have different messaging, so
why not do that with your packaging?
“That’s the shift in strategy you have to
think about,” she continues. “Because we
are one of the first to have this machine, we
have to explain to our customers that this is
not just meant for short runs or versioning.
Brittany is doing a great job working with
larger customers and brands to show them
the full potential. That’s our challenge as
well as our opportunity.”
INVESTINGINDIGITAL
want to start slower and smaller.”
Another value proposition of the HP
30000 is versioning. “A lot of chocolatiers
have 10 versions of chocolate bars,” Revella
says. “On the traditional press if you’re
going to make 10,000 of one you need to
make 10,000 of all of them. You can gang
run but that still requires new plates and
setup. On the HP if you wanted to run 10
versions of one box and all different
quantities, the first version could be 10,000,
the second could be 5,000, and the third
version could be 300 so versioning is a key
for the HP.”
Revella says she is also seeing a trend in
personalization. “You can look at any
industry and see a trend toward, ‘I want this
to be all about me’ personalization. Having
Hyland adds, “We’ve really only
scratched the surface of what we can do
with this press. One of the things we’re
always worried about is overcoming the
stigma of older digital printing. Digital
printing eight years ago is not today’s digital
printing.”
The irony of Tap Packaging’s
relationship with digital printing cannot be
ignored. In 2008, demand for the
company’s line of photo packaging
significantly decreased when pictures that
were once printed were now being shared
digitally. With its core market declining, the
company invested in the necessary
equipment and capabilities and launched
into the premium confection market.
“We’ve been watching digital for quite a
long time because it had drastically changed
our photography world. We were a
successful company that dominated the
market and then digital came out and
quickly eroded the demand for our
product. Now we’re taking that back,”
Hyland says. I