Esko Equinox completes Athena Graphics’ Advanced Prepress solution

Belgium based high quality prepress specialist Athena Graphics adds Esko Equinox (www.esko.com) to its portfolio to complete their Advanced Prepress workflow, an innovative end-to-end solution for brand owners and packaging printers. Esko Equinox creates colour conversions for extended gamut printing and eliminates the need for spot colors, making production faster, more efficient, cost effective and reliable.

With their Advanced Prepress solution, Athena Graphics provides an answer to the increasing demand for shorter runs and shorter time to market production. Kenneth Hostyn, Technical Project Manager at Athena Graphics says that the need for more efficient production is a clear trend in the packaging market. Hostyn: “Packaging printers and brand owners have become used to digital print, which uses a fixed set of printing colours. With our Advanced Prepress technology we can obtain the same and even better quality by using process colours instead of spot colours. By converting spot colours into process colours, our customers can increase their production speed and even improve their quality.”

Esko Equinox can convert almost any spot colour into 4 to 7 process colours. By working with a fixed set of inks the printer reduces downtime of the presses, reduces wash ups, saves inks (since he does not have to change inks anymore) and optimises production time. Hostyn: “Our Advanced Prepress concept uses the latest technologies. Combined with the modern presses of our customers and our high-tech platemaking, quality is no longer an issue when using process colours. Moreover, it creates a stable production environment. It is now possible to produce prints that exactly match the proof.”

There are several reasons why Athena Graphics chose Equinox. Hostyn: “Esko has an extended knowledge base when it comes to colour. The people of Esko are very familiar with the processes at the print companies. The development of Esko Equinox is based on years of experience and research and development. One of the most important reasons to choose Equinox is the ability to automate colour conversions. By automating the process we eliminate human errors and we can optimise production. Esko Equinox perfectly closes the gap with outstanding colour conversion. It was just the tool we were looking for.”