Printing Made Painless: Cadmus Whitehall Benefits from Long-Standing Experience and Newfangled Equipment

By Eric Van Osten

Cadmus Whitehall offers many solutions that can promote a unique brand message in its best light.

When is a printing company more than just a printer? When it guards your brand image with care and diligence. One company that has made this approach their avowed policy is the Whitehall Group of Cadmus Communications Corporation. Based in Charlotte, NC, the Cadmus Whitehall Group pulls from the vast experience of Cadmus and considers the scope of their capabilities when engaging every client.

"We are really selling and packaging brand management," explains Tom McRae, v.p. of marketing and technical services, Whitehall Group. "Our uniqueness in our packaging comes from the fact that we have the background in doing brochures, catalogs, and promotional materials."

Cadmus Whitehall listens to many client marketing managers whose package is the critical point of sale. These clients want their packages to stand out on the shelf versus their competition. "We work with them to find better, more unique ways to put paper and ink together," McRae says. "They already have their brand, but what we examine is how to technically institute the communication of that brand when it's put on paper."

The Whitehall Group is the divison of Cadmus that specializes in packaging and promotional materials. The other division of the company focuses on medical, scientific, and technical journals. Out of the main Cadmus headquarters in Richmond, VA, the company reaches all over the world, with several key facilities in both the Caribbean and in Southeast Asia.

Four target markets

Cadmus Whitehall specializes in four specific niche markets: apparel, technology, consumer goods, and healthcare. Services include a variety of specialty packaging, high-quality folding carton production, web- and sheet-fed printing, media duplication, assembly, fulfillment, and distribution.

The apparel market is the one that has the greatest global reach for Cadmus Whitehall, because clothing manufacturing is often performed in low-cost-labor countries. "The products we're producing would be the packaging that holds the apparel—packs of T-shirts and underwear, for example," says McRae. "The package itself, we create from paperboard or produce an insert in a plastic bag that has the product information and picture of a person wearing the product printed on it." McRae notes that in the apparel world, there is really a push for letting the consumer feel and see the product.

In the technology market, Cadmus Whitehall is responsible for mailing over 10 million promotional CDs in packages nearly every month. "We'll print, create the packages, insert the CDs, and then mail them," says McRae. "We do some traditional software packaging, but most of what we're doing is promotional."

In the consumer goods field, Cadmus Whitehall prints promotional materials for several industries. In the healthcare field, Cadmus Whitehall creates the primary packages that contain drugs. Bottles are giving way to blister cards because physicians pass out so many sample packets to patients for trial doses.

The strength of Cadmus comes from the combination of extensive design experience, robust printing capabilities, and efficient production solutions.

The creative process

Doing so much customized printing and packaging for such a variety of markets means that the process for each order can differ enormously. "Our world is a very customized one," says McRae. "We're working with companies who want to do really knock-out packaging that will stand out from everyone else. This is applied not just graphically, but also structurally. We get involved with the structure of the package very early on in the process with our clients, usually when the graphics are being created, because we believe graphics and structure go hand-in-hand."

"We have our own structural engineering department that will work with customers to come up with the type of structure they are looking for to market their product," adds Jay Gibble, v.p. of manufacturing. "Structure can be a real selling point because it can really help to communicate a product to the customer and it has important functional requirements."

The package design process at Cadmus Whitehall can involve product testing and focus groups, and it takes into account the entire lifecycle of the product and package. Sometimes hooks need to be integrated into the package design, for instance, so that it will stay in place when the package is processed through equipment and after it is deployed to the client. McRae explains, "If a product is being inserted into our package with automated equipment, we need to ensure it runs efficiently on the automated equipment both while being manufactured in our plant and at the customer's facility."

Gibble adds: "We have to make sure that we not only come up with a unique design, but the design must work on the machinery because the clients have to be able to package their products efficiently. So, we can't come up with something that's really cool and neat if it takes them three times as long to process. Our job is to create something that's really going to work on their machinery but also really appeal to the market."

Once the graphics and structure have been determined, then the real production begins. After proofing and prototyping, the job is sent to the printing press, whether it is located in Charlotte or elsewhere in the world. The very first run, however, is usually completed in Charlotte to set the standard, and then duplicated at remote facilities.

Depending on the specific design, structure, and quantity, Cadmus Whitehall will either print sheets and send them to a die-cutter to be cut out, or they'll start with a big roll of paperboard, print on that, and die-cut it on the same machine. Cadmus Whitehall offers many value-added features too, such as cellophane windows. In that case, the die-cut blank has to be put on a folder gluer (assuming it's a dimensional package rather than just a flat pack) and folded into shape. The same basic process can be done with plastic, too.

The Whitehall Group produces a lot of promotional packaging where a card or brochure must be inserted into the package. One client is an Internet service provider whose package includes a promotional CD that's inserted inline into each package as it is being formed.

The Heidelberg XL-105 Speedmaster sheet-fed press is a workhorse at Cadmus Whitehall, able to run at 18,000 sheets/hour.

The necessary equipment

Cadmus Whitehall uses some of the most state-of-the-art printing equipment available today, much of which comes from the company Heidelberg, with U.S. headquarters in Kennesaw, GA. The Speedmaster XL-105 sheet-fed press is the newest addition to the Cadmus Whitehall family. This press is updated with many new features from the past generation press, the CD-102. Gibble explains that it's a larger press, with 7% more image area to print on. "In a world like ours (printing cartons), 7% can mean a whole extra row of cartons," says Gibble. "If you're running millions of cartons, that adds up."

The XL-105 is a faster press than the CD-102, able to run at 18,000 sheets/hour. Additional benefits of the XL-105 are contact-free sheet transport integrated inking/dampening system with adjustable oscillator strokes and highly automated plate changing. This gives the user better control over the ink flow and color. It sits on an 18" platform, versus the older style that sat on a 12" platform, so more paper can fit into the press and be delivered during changeovers.

Once printed, packages may need to be die-cut. For that, Cadmus Whitehall uses the Dymatrix 106 die-cutting and embossing system, which matches up nicely with the Speedmaster XL-105. The die-cutter has absolutely accurate register. It is fully automated, with logistics support on the back end. It automatically changes skids of paper when it runs out, so it never has to stop.

But sheet-fed printing is not all that Cadmus Whitehall is capable of handling. With the Gallus KM-510 narrow web inline system, flexo printing is also available. The Gallus KM-510 offers water-based or UV flexo and reverse-side printing capabilities, coupled inline with hot foil stamping/hologram insetting, laminating, and either rotary or flat-bed window punching, creasing, die-cutting, and embossing.

"You're basically using a photopolymer plate that has a raised image. When the ink adheres to that raised image, the ink is transferred directly to the paperboard," Gibble comments about the KM-510. "This press can actually run 8- to 24-point material, and it runs material directly off the roll." On this flexo press, a solid roll of material runs through the entire press, printing one color after another on one long sheet web.

The press also includes a flatbed die cutter. The beauty of this press is you eliminate having to buy sheeted paper, so you can buy rolls directly from the mills, eliminating the converting part charges. You're also printing and die-cutting in one shot, cutting back work in the process area of your plant," says Gibble.

Inventory management

When it comes to keeping customers in the loop as to where their assets are throughout the process, Cadmus Whitehall has made it as easy as turning on a computer. Cadmus has developed its own Web-based 24-hour access Real-Time Inventory Management System (RIMS). This system tracks the customer's fulfillment project components throughout each step of the process.

"We give our customers anywhere in the world the capability to see the status of their project—not just in our plant here in Charlotte, but all over the world, in all of our plants," says McRae. If a customer has material in five different plants, the customer can go online and see all of that information together. With its ability to customize and optimize any project, its use of the latest and equipment available, and its 24/7 RIMS customer monitoring solution, Cadmus Whitehall is a distinctive printer with a history of performance that is poised to tackle any challenge.