Long-time Esko customer Marvaco continues to broaden its relationship with Esko which goes back to the early 90's. Working with Esko's solutions, including six CDI's with HD Flexo and Full HD Flexo technology as well as a range of prepress and workflow software, Marvaco is building offerings that ensure the highest possible print quality for brand owners and printers across the entire packaging supply chain.

“As one of the leading prepress suppliers in the Finnish market, we work closely with brand owners and printers to continually achieve higher quality and greater efficiency,” says Kai Lankinen, Managing Director of Marvaco. “Esko is a business critical partner in enabling our market-leading performance.”

Marvaco is one of the leading prepress companies in the Nordic Region, with over 70 employees and annual turnover of €8.5 million in 2013. Its relationship with Esko began when the company installed the first ArtPro software in Finland in 1995. Over the years, Marvaco continued its innovation path and has today six Esko CDI's and four sites in Finland and Sweden. The most recent addition is the CDI 5080 with Inline UV-2, which facilitated its achievement of the Esko Full HD Certification, next to the partner Certification for their work with RKW Finland. In total, Marvaco's qualifications has enabled it to certify 18 packaging printers as Esko HD Flexo Certified partners.

“Esko HD Flexo is thé standard in the market, brand owners and customers simply request it,” says Lankinen. “The ability to offer Esko Full HD Flexo elevates quality and efficiency in both flexible and corrugated packaging. Brand owners and printers have been saying thank you for the superior quality it enables. That is significant, and it helps our brand owner and printer customers win market share.”

Marvaco also works with a raft of Esko software solutions, including ArtPro, Studio, DeskPack, PackEdge, Automation Engine and FlexRip. “These Esko solutions enable us to be as efficient as possible, supplying the best services to our customers,” says Lankinen. The newest addition to Marvaco’s software portfolio is Esko WebCenter. “WebCenter is an outstanding customer portal that keeps all of the prepress and project data in one place, offering improved communications across the supply chain as well as improved workflow management,” adds Lankinen. “Today, an increasing number of participants in the packaging supply chain are collaborating amongst each other, and this near-real-time capability makes that collaboration much more valuable. We are also finding that WebCenter speeds time to market by improving the control of approval cycles.”

It is this kind of innovation that helps maintain long-term relationships, explains Lankinen. “WebCenter is not something customers are asking for yet,” he says. “They are used to the traditional way of working, and many have their own internal systems for approval; but typically these are not as efficient. Like HD Flexo, we believe that soon brand owners will also be specifying web collaboration tools like WebCenter.”

With its innovation and commitment to quality, and its long-term partnership with Esko and other key partners like RKW Finland, Marvaco and its customers are no strangers to various industry awards, having achieved 29 international awards and recognitions since 2002. Its latest industry accolades include two gold awards at the recent EFIA Print Awards 2014, and a gold and bronze awards at the prestigious FTA 2014 Excellency in Flexography Awards where Marvaco together with RKW Finland additionally also received the Best-of-Show award.

“We constantly strive to maintain our market leadership position and give our customers an edge. We have been the first in Finland to leverage a wide range of pioneering technologies that result in significant improvements to print quality and competitive advantage by making production more efficient and expanding the color gamut,” concludes Lankinen. “We have partnered with Esko for a long time. Their solutions have been a key enabler to our ability to develop solutions that increase our market differentiation. And we are already planning our next investment to help us maintain this leading position in Scandinavia and further increase our market share in the coming years.”