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Elías Cueto

Five years old

In 2018, SEISTAG will be five years old. The company is celebrating and wants to thank the PRINTODECO Partners for their trust and wisdom on wood… It has been a great opportunity for SEISTAG to share a European Project with five star companies such as TORCULO, LOGISIETE, and LOSAN. This collaboration has helped SEISTAG to make great leaps forward.
In addition to the inspiration provided by the project partners, SEISTAG wants to acknowledge the European Agency for SMEs for its support since the PRINTODECO Project was rewarded the grant in 2016. Many things would not have been possible without its help.
As a result, SEISTAG reached many recognitions over the last years. In 2015, the company was recognized as “Innovative SME” by the National Ministry for Economy. In 2016, the Regional Government awarded SEISTAG with the “silver label” of Innovative Companies: occupying the 13th position in terms of innovative activity in Galicia. In 2017, the well-known Ardán Business Data Base included SEISTAG in the category of “Gazelle Company” because of three consecutive years of turnover expansion. Today, in 2018, SEISTAG is happy and prouod to be shortlisted the Financial Times as one of the 1000 fastest growing European Companies.
These achievements have been made possible thanks to the company personnel. Their ambition, professionalism and effort enabled SEISTAG to reach the current position. So, Thanks to all!

PRINTODECO – the next step!

The end of April had us enjoying a well organized and very personal presentation by TÓRCULO COMUNICACIÓN GRÁFICA, S.A.

It was time to present the next step in the PRINTODECO project and the company’s director and one of the project’s main driving forces, Mr. Jacobo Bermejo, made sure his guests were taken care of!

The evening started of with a presentation of PRINTODECO’s main goals and objectives. Judging by the looks on the faces of the nearly 100 guests who had gathered, interest was captured by an interesting outline of the project’s main results. The professionals from across the printing world were visibly impressed by the promise Digital Printing offers of printing alternative substrates like the project’s melamine decorative paper. As a main benefit, Mr. Bermejo outlined that digital printing will provide flexibility and personalized design to the boards. More interestingly, it will allow SMEs focussed on design and/or printing to enter the decorative board market. Music to many of the graphic designers’ ears, present in the audience!

After another much applauded conference by José Luís Moro, Creative Director of Pinguïno Torreblanca, about new ways to use our sense of humor (if any!) in publicity, Tórculo’s new Indigo 12000 Digital Printer was presented. Guests were attended by the company’s personnel who patiently answered all questions about the impressive new printer.

The succes of the evening was sealed off by an energetic performance of a live band who had turned one of the offset printers into a very original stage! While enjoying a drink and of course some very tasty ‘tapas’, they’re seemed to be no doubt about it among the professsionals present: digital printing and decorative boards have a very promising future ahead of them!

COSME’S February 2018 networking day!

This April saw us celebrating two years of fun-filled, design-based COSME projects, a festive follow up to last year’s COSME Networking Day in October 2017 where the COSME community met last. Last month, the major policy event ‘EU Industry Days’, organised by EASME, has provided a space to promote exciting projects ranging from recycling children’s toys, improving the indoor air we breathe and finding safe solutions to monitor childrens’ growth and mobility. Proving once again that innovation and diversification are but a few of descriptions fit for COSME’s selection of entrepeneuring SMEs this call!

The COSME stand was visited by Commissioners Mrs. Elżbieta Bieńkowska for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, and Mr. Carlos Moedas for Research, Science and Innovation. Also present were the European Parliament President Mr. Tajani and Mrs. Lowri Evans, Director General of Industry and both were very interested in all the promising developments the four present projects can already be proud of.

Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska talked to the founders of each of the four projects while admiring the tangible results of COSME funding in SMEs. Ms. Lowri Evans was very interested to learn in which ways COSME helped the SMEs to scale up their innovative ideas and turn them into businesses.

Our EP President Tajani also dedicated his time to the 4 COSME projects and was more than happy to pose for pictures you can enjoy watching on Flickr.

Here you will recognise your peers from the COSME design based consumer goods in full European entrepeneuring mode!

Commissioner Moedas has become a fan of Eco-Birdy that recycles plastic toys and transforms them in beautiful design furniture for children. Mr. Moedas praised the project on his Twitter account as one of the best examples of circular economy. Ecobirdy has also been posted on EC’s facebook page: a great achievement as the web has many followers across the whole of Europe! Congratulations!

COSME is the EU programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). It runs from 2014 to 2020 with a planned budget of €2.3bn and supports better access to finance for SMEs and to markets, rewarding entrepreneurship and offering more favourable conditions for business creation and growth in Europe.

We are currently harvesting some very promising results on the efforts invested in the implementation of our ideas and projects. We are very proud to be part of the group and of the wonderful ideas that just seem to keep on coming! So spread the COSME BUZZ!

Real size digital boards

Newness is very importer for the decorative surfaces industry. Therefore, little information on the coming products can be shown to the public. Nevertheless, on March 2018 LOSAN shared some details about their new exclusive designs.

The new products are have been developed within the new digital laboratory of the Company. There have been doubts on where would be the best place for this facility. Finally, LOSAN decided to place it at ASERPAL installations in Vilasantar (A Coruña) Spain. By means of this, they get direct access to the warehouse of wood veneer of hat Company. That stock of fine veneer at LOSAN warehouse will be the source for digitalization processes and product development.

According to the professionals involved in the project, the image quality is already “good enough” to fit market expectations. During a visit of the Consortium partners to the digital laboratory, a technician of LOSAN explained details on design production. He showed how a single plank of rustic wood was transformed into a high quality digital pattern ready to print at industrial scale.

SEISTAG at CMD 4.0

On February the 27th, the 4.0 commission of Cluster da Madeira hold its first meeting. The encounter took place at FEUGA installations in Santiago de Compostela (Galicia). During that afternoon, several companies of the wood industry shared their experience on TIC implementation within the wood industry.

There was SEISTAG among the participators, who included important local industries such as FINSA, BETANZOS HB or ALIUSPORTA. The technical coordinator of PRINTODECO Project give details on the COSME European Project to the all the companies interested on it.

All the Companies showed their interest on the introduction of innovative technologies in order to improve processes during the meeting. Artificial vision and collaborative robotics seem to be the most interesting technologies in order to improve competitiveness within the conventional industry.

Product innovation also catches the attention of the entrepreneurs, but this kind of development represents a different level of compromise, as market uptake is difficult to predict. For that reason PRINTODECO Project seemed interesting to many industrials who recognize the challenge of implementing an innovative productive process.

LOGISIETE back at FIMMA

FIMMA-MADERALIA Fair was a complete success in 2018. The meeting summed more than 60.000 square metres of exhibitors reaching more than 40.000 visits. According to the organization, up to 2.000 people came from abroad reaching the highest level of activity in the history of the meeting. This means growing over 19% in comparison to the previous encounter.

The PRINTODECO Partnership was present on the International Fair by means of LOGISIETE. The Company showed its new offer at a large and well positioned stand. Thanks to its participation on the Fair, LOGISIETE presented itself to more than five hundred different Companies.

The presence of the Consortium Partner at the Valencia International Fair included an informative show on PRINTODECO Project. Along the four days of the Fair, the Company showed the capability to adapt the traditional products to the current demand looking for personalization.

LOGISIETE also took advantage of this Fair to highlight new designs such as the so called Ultragloss or Ultramatt. Those finishings apply to the Venice doors, which are a successful product of the Company. LOGISIETE also shred its compromise of serving finished furniture produced on demand in just 24 hours: a demonstration of the Company being a technological leader.

PRINTODECO at MADERALIA

The 38th edition of FIMMA and MADERALIA takes place in Valencia between February 6 and 9, Two International Fairs happen at the same time. On the one hand, Machinery and Tools; and on the other hand that of Materials and Components. Both focus on Furniture, Carpentry and Decoration. The two fairs represent the main meeting within the sector at national level and overlap with CEVISAMA, another local Fair in the sector.

In the 2018 edition, the fair has 443 exhibitors. Among them is the LOGISIETE Group. The company will hold its convention at this fair and will explain its participation in the PRINTODECO project. With this action, the company demonstrates its commitment to adopt the latest technologies with the aim of increasing the possibilities of personalization of products based on decorative melamine boards.

In addition to the value of personalization, PRINTODECO contributes to reducing the inefficiencies derived from an offer characterized by the large number of references and the rapid obsolescence. During the fair, LOGISIETE will show the technological complexity of the melamine board and the possibilities that digital printing can bring to the sector. Thanks to this technology, it is possible a faster renewal of references, a broader range of catalogues, greater possibilities of personalization and a prominent role of the final user in the development of the design.

FIMMA MADERALIA represents an innovative context. It recognizes emerging issues such as mass customization and co-design. The fair has a busy schedule within which the PRINTODECO project will be shown on February the 5th.

Pieces for furniture

The first digitally printed pieces for furniture are ready at LOGISIETE facilities. As it was expected, the result of this experience shows the challenges of the market success of new technology. Although the pieces work in terms of technical performance, many issues ought to be improved in order to be feasible for the final market.

The first difficulty relates to the matching edge banding to the surface design. The final product demands edge banding made on purpose in order to match the design of the digitally printed boards. The Consortium is able to design surfaces but has no means to produce edge banding.

A second difficulty is the cost of endless images. The objective of the project is reducing time to market but the so called “pre-printing” process of endless images is two large to allow cost-effective production at TORCULO. For that reason, the Consortium plans to use rotative sheers for cutting the impregnated paper.

A third challenge is the image quality itself. The Partners reached a wide gamut and high colour fidelity, but the grain and focus of the images is still not good enough to face the paper printed by means of rotogravure. Calibrating the image quality is the major challenge of LOSAN who is currently working in this field.

IMPROVED WORKFLOW

Thanks to PRINTODECO project, TORCULO and LOGISIETE have worked together to maximize processes synchronization. Both Companies share a highly organized internal organisation. PRINTODECO takes advantage of that background to define a shared workflow, which starts at the orders website.

Both Companies have reached a highly structured workflow, and both ought to renew its offer very often. From one side is TORCULO, which deals with over 100 work orders per day, most of them under 300 €. This stream of low cost work needs a high level of automatization and efficiency to be profitable. For example, TORCULO has made changes into the budgetary tool to be more flexible during PRINTODECO Project.

From the other side LOGISIETE, which delivers its products within the first 24 hours. This is a major commercial value for its customers, but it makes necessary to standardize and manage stocks with a high level of accuracy. During PRINTODECO, execution LOGISIETE has also made improvements into its internal tools, allowing scalability and better communication with customers, providers and third parties.

SMEs behind PRINTODECO

Digitally printed melamine boards would not be possible without the help of high tech SMEs such as Imatia, Inkromatic and Parqueweb. PRINTODECO partners started cooperation with those companies in 2015. They provided technological support and advice based on their prior experience. The collaboration was based on a Research and Development Project boosted by CDTI. CDTI is the Spanish Agency for Industrial and Technological Development.

Imatia is a SME specializes in rapid software development for companies and public administrations. In addition to serving as a basis for customer software development, Imatia offers this technology to companies or departments that want to develop high-quality application, either for internal use or for distribution.

Inkromatic is a SME focused on ink supply and technical support to inkjet printing. They take part in major shows such as CPRINT in Madrid. They are one of the major suppliers in the northwest of Spain.

Parqueweb is a SME developing on purpose software. They have large experience with e-commerce tools. They also provide technical support to PRINTODECO Project. Note that the customization tool of the project was developed with the collaboration of SEISTAG and Parqueweb.

The collaboration with these SMEs helps PRINTODECO to resolve many technological problems and receive qualified support of professionals.