The Future of Folding Cartons
- Published: May 19, 2025
Zero-fault Packaging in a Seamless End-to-end Workflow
By Harold Leete, Director of Sales, Folding Carton, BOBST North America
Like all sectors of the packaging industry, folding cartons have undergone an evolution in recent years. Run lengths have been decreasing, with brand owners demanding shorter times to market. At the same time, sustainability has come to the forefront as the most urgent topic, meaning the need to produce zero-fault packaging without waste is greater than ever before.
In this environment, smart companies have continued to stay calm and solutions-focused, speaking with customers to identify the key pain points. Customers want an end-to-end solution partner for all their folding carton production needs, from printing, embellishment and die-cutting, to folding-gluing and quality control solutions. And vitally, zero-fault packaging is a must-have for the entire production process.
Customers must look for packaging specialists with a large portfolio of printing and converting solutions covering all industries, as well as ones who continue to introduce innovations shaping the future of the packaging world, based on the pillars of digitization, connectivity, automation and sustainability.
It is a new era in packaging, where entire production lines can be connected, enabling end-to-end workflows; all machines and equipment talking to each other seamlessly transmitting data through a cloud-based platform. The constantly evolving cloud-based digital platform delivers solutions to prepare, produce, react to, maintain and optimize the production workflow of a job. By ensuring an efficient dataflow between the digital and physical worlds, such a platform orchestrates the entire production process — from the client's PDF to the finished product.
New solutions will help shape the future of the packaging world. Let's see how some of these will support folding carton converters at every stage of the production process.
Pre-press: Minimizing Downtime, Maximizing Uptime
Converters can optimize available production time with digitized prepress solutions. When a digital platform is established to allow a real-time connection between all stakeholders, the aim is to make sure that information is always up-to-date and immediately available for maximum efficiency.
With advanced tools, data from a customer PDF is sent directly from the back office to the equipment for setup. This makes setups faster, more operator-friendly, reduces the risk of errors and ensures continuous improvement based on production practice.
Downtime reduction is also achieved by using digital data for quality control. With digital inspection, the projection of the original PDF files validates that print, varnish, embellishment and die-cutting jobs are faultless. Once validated, the solutions get all the information, to automatically manage tooling and set up the quality control and production parameters. This saves converters a lot of time on the shop floor, while also minimizing the risks of human error and bringing zero-fault packaging within reach.
Printing and Embellishment: All-in-one Digital Solution
A new end-to-end, all-in-one digital printing and converting platform specifically tailored for the folding carton industry opens up new possibilities for short-to-mid-size runs, and drastically increases opportunities with short lead times and high product quality.
Combining printing, embellishment, quality control and die-cutting can ensure the shortest time to market (even offering same-day delivery) and the best Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) among printing and converting solutions.
This platform, which features full inline and automated printing adjustment capabilities and quality inspection, is ideal for runs up to 6,000 B1 equivalent sheets where it can significantly reduce production time by up to 80 percent and also reduce costs on short runs by as much as 80 percent, while eliminating waste, logistics and downtime required for traditional production processes.
Die-cutting: Boosting Efficiency
Folding carton converters want to boost their efficiency at this stage. They need detailed insights for their tools, via better control features resulting in less patching and better resource management. With the right tool, machines are connected to the cutting die through a data chip embedded directly in the tool. This allows an instant recognition of the job and to access production-ready job recipes, always recalling the latest setting. This way, converters can also collect data, and track tool performance anytime, anywhere. Proactive tooling management helps to avoid production and quality issues.
There is also a newly designed die-cutter platen engineered to minimize the time spent on patching. In addition to simplification, it brings with it a reduction of patching per die-cutting job by up to 80 percent - a significant saving of time. Electricity and air being extremely valuable resources, the best companies offer energy efficiency functions on their die-cutters that can help reduce energy consumption.
Folding-gluing: Achieving Zero-fault Packaging
Converters need to maximize efficiency and guarantee zero-fault packaging - particularly when needing to conform with highly important specifications, such as the EU regulations for pharma cartons. To comply with pharma regulations, a device for embossing Braille dots on pharma boxes can be used.
To push quality and conformity to the next level, converters can even use a program that automatically recognizes and recalls the respective recipes while simultaneously checking the conformity of the produced Braille pattern on the boxes with EU standards. This reduces job changeover time to a minimum and completely removes the risk of human error. Then it not only controls embossed Braille on cartons, but also certifies the quality of the converter's tools.
To ensure zero-fault packaging, automated systems provide converters with 100 percent quality control. When directly integrated into the folding-gluing line, this automation ensures that each and every box meets the highest quality standards. Absolutely everything is checked: Printing defects, missing text, varnishing, metallizing and any faults are automatically and immediately ejected.
The Final Step: A Closed-loop Workflow
At the end of production, quality reports should be generated and important production data provided at each step of the process. These form the basis for closing the loop. All the data generated by the machine throughout the process is streamed back to create the digital twin — a PDF enriched with all relevant data. This effectively closes the loop of the data flow and workflow... and the future of the folding carton industry has arrived.
About the Author
Harold Leete is Director of Sales, Folding Carton at BOBST North America, with over 35 years of experience in the printing and packaging industry. He began his career in Graphic Arts and has held leadership roles across operations, sales, and business development. Since joining BOBST in 2007, Harold has developed a deep passion for the folding carton segment. He also serves as an instructor for the PPC Folding Carton Boot Camp and sits on the board of the Foil & Specialty Effects Association (FSEA).
