Diamond Packaging

Principles of Printing - Professor Garno

Winter 2005-06

Curtis Gippe, Nell Doyle, Karyn Lewis,

Bradford Johnson, Mike Demler, Wallace Patterson

Diamond Packaging 2

Diamond Packaging is greatly celebrated for their innovative packaging solutions for

many big-name corporations, including The Gillette Company, L’Oreal USA, Godiva

Chocolatier, and more. Aiding their success, the company has been designing folding cartons

since 1911 using two main print methods—Web Flexo and Offset. The company differentiates

themselves from their competition with the use of an all-digital workflow to improve print quality

and turn around time, as well as cutting-edge, innovative technology such as advanced methods

for direct printing on multiple surfaces and a superior quality system for improving color control.

Diamond packaging is continually exceeding their customer’s expectations, implementing the

latest technology and advanced packaging solutions. Along with their all-digital workflow

improving print quality and turn around time, they are setting themselves apart from the

competition with many creative and unique features, with a focus on accuracy, approval and—

above all—success.

Diamond Paper Box Company opened its doors in 1911, a time when the horse and

buggy were still a popular mode of transportation. Because of the lack of speed and efficiency in

travel of that era, most companies kept their business local. At the time, their business thrived

producing garment and cake boxes. Within its first 50 years, the company was sold three times:

To Wayne Baumer in 1936, to George Stininger in 1948, and then to Harry Voss in 1965.

In its founding days, Diamond Packaging thrived locally as it was easiest and most

efficient for customers. But with advances being made in transportation and the rise of larger

companies with lower prices, Diamond began to struggle finding a place in a much more

competitive market. Taking his stepfather’s advice, ―The most important thing in growing a

company is giving the customer exactly what he wants,‖ Harry was able to build a company with

seven employees that did $243,000 in sales, into a corporation that now has 250 full-time and 150

part-time employees, and $40 million in sales. The company’s numbers also increased as it

moved residences in 1978 and continues to expand (to over 150,000 square feet). They now have

ten unit presses with multicolor capability, connected to a computer network.

Not only did Voss seek to physically expand the company, he also wanted to expand

Diamond Packaging’s demographic and market. While discussing challenges within the

packaging market with a friend and vice president at Eastman Kodak Company in 1989, the two

of them concluded that one of the biggest challenges they faced was the fact that each country

had its own packaging companies. This, in turn, caused delays in product launches from country-

to-country. It also made the packaging lack uniformity with suppliers in other countries, and

consumers would leave stores unconvinced that it was the same product. Because of this

discontent, Harry Voss created a partnership between Diamond Packaging and Berlin-based

Leunisman GmbH named Global Packaging Alliance (GPA). Because of the alliance, products

can be launched nearly simultaneously throughout the world with considerable uniformity and

brand recognition. Companies can also be assured of Diamond-quality merchandise all over the

world. There are also lower administration costs, shorter product turnover times, and greater

flexibility within the company. Furthermore, many large companies prefer working with one

Diamond Packaging 3

company rather than many small ones.

Expansion of the alliance has also resulted in greater synergy for packaging globally.

New members are carefully evaluated, taking vision/value and similar equipment, etc. into

consideration. By putting applicant corporations through this process, the GPA can maintain

greater congruence.

Gillette’s Mach3 razor became the alliance’s first business venture, and proved to be a

successful one. The GPA was able to design the packaging so more copies could be printed per

sheet all over the world, and saved the company 20 percent ($1million), because it did not have to

recreate the package in each country. The Mach3 razor was

launched in 1997 and had a six week delay between countries,

by Gillette’s next product launch of the Venus razor, the delay

was within a mere 24 hours. Due to their extreme secrecy,

Gillette has remained a major account for Diamond Packaging.

This helps Voss to remain to true to the company’s mission

statement, ―Quality is when the customer comes back, not the

product.‖ By constantly reinvesting in Diamond Packaging,

Voss was able to build a small, local company into an

international company that shows great promise for the future.

Who exactly is Diamond Packaging? A member of the Global Packaging Alliance, the

company is a full service packaging provider that designs and manufactures paperboard and

plastic packaging, counter-top displays, physician sample packaging, blister cards, stretch cards,

and dispenser cartons. They are a private, family-owned company located in Henrietta, New

York. Furthermore, Diamond Packaging has been voted the global industry leader in providing

high-quality, innovative packaging solutions. Some of the company’s clients include global

corporations such as The Gillette Company, Agfa Corporation, Eastman Kodak, Godiva

Chocolatier, L’Oreal, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., and The 3M Company. They serve the

pharmaceutical, healthcare, personal care, food, medical device, photographic, software, and

household market segments.

Diamond Contract Manufacturing (DCM), the

company's contract manufacturing and packaging division, is

also a privately held, certified women-owned business that was

founded in 1989. It offers a complete line of services including

automatic cartoning, bagging, bar coding, blister sealing, EAS

source tagging, flexible packaging, form-fill-seal, labeling,

product assembly, RF sealing, shrink wrapping, and skin

packaging. DCM also packages a wide variety of

pharmaceutical and medical device products. The company's

facilities are ISO 9001 and ISO 9002 certified, and is CGMP

Gillette’s Mach3 razor

Gillette’s Mach3 razor

Diamond Packaging 4

compliant for the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. DCM is also registered with the FDA

for secondary packaging and labeling.

Diamond, through DCM and its involvement in the Global Packaging Alliance, can

accommodate any global customer from box design to shipping out the complete finished box

with product in it to anywhere in the world. They not only provide contract packaging solutions,

but with DCM they are capable of providing assembly of products as well. With ninety years of

experience, the company provides a full range of services from structural design to fulfillment,

typically designing and manufacturing their promotional pieces in-house to make use of all the

services they offer.

What is their vision? Diamond Packaging considers themselves part of their customers'

businesses, with pronounced commitment to providing them the greatest opportunity for success

in the marketplace. Considering themselves one manufacturing company with multiple locations

throughout the world, they try to paint the picture of a cohesive, empowered workforce, which

promotes trust, respect and individual growth, and emphasizing the "capacity to change" in order

to assure success.

The company’s stated mission is to assure their customers' success, achieving corporate

financial objectives, and enhancing the community through job development and corporate

support. For this, they put forth proactive efforts in their approach to developing solutions in the

form of increasing revenue, reducing costs, increasing efficiencies, or meeting regulatory

requirements for each project. The company is also focused on incorporating interactive planning

processes and leading edge technologies, while being conscientious of the environment and

making efforts to improve education and culture. It is their goal to stay on top of innovation and

creativity through employee involvement and technology while striving to maintain clean and

safe operations.

Diamond Packaging has strongly stated their belief that companies who strategically

position themselves for growth, image, and competitiveness have the advantage today. For this

cause, the company participates in many organizations to stay on top of the latest trends and

issues within our industry, maintaining an active role in order to improve success. They also

continue to build on their ability to maintain confidentiality and streamline the packaging process

because of their experience.

Hexachrome is a color printing process that was introduced in 1994, and now widely

used by Diamond Packaging. At that time standard process colors, Cyan(C), Magenta(M),

Yellow(Y), and Black(K), were the standard in most printing industries. Today ―four color

process‖ is still the standard. With CMKY there are certain colors that the process cannot

produce, or reproduce, from a larger color gamut, such any RGB (Red, Green, Blue) color space.

To get a wider color gamut printers added Pantone or spot colors in a color unit on their

presses. This allowed printers the ability to print colors that could not be printed using four-color

process. However, using CMYK plus spots can be expensive and is limited to the number of units

on a press. It is also hard to sell spot colors to certain customers because of the added cost. It is

Diamond Packaging 5

much easier to sell normal four-color process because it is more cost effective, but it lacks

―vibrancy.‖ That lack of vibrancy created the need for the Pantone Matching System (PMS),

whereby printers have a means of matching spot colors to some spot colors using four color

processes – this was very successful. However, only about 30% of spot colors are reproducible in

this way, to replicate 80% of spot colors, pantone invented Hexachrome.

Hexachrome achieves an enlarged gamut by exchanging process colors with brighter and

purer CMYK inks and added orange and green inks. This allows brighter greens, more vibrant

purples, and truer skin tones. This paradigm shift in the way that printers work with color made

the entire process more difficult for designers because of a lack of education. There was, and still

is, a lack of general understanding in the design world about print and CMKY, adding two more

colors to the workflow didn’t make this an easy well to printer’s customers. Because there was

little understand by designers, there is a lack of customers’ wants, thus lack of general success in

Hexachrome. This technology has taken a good mount of time to gain acceptance and has a good

penetration into the packaging world because they are accustomed to working with complicated

color models requiring more education, so going from 12 inks, to 6 inks with an equal color

gamut was not a major shift. Because of the terrific color gamut of Hexachrome, it allows for

terrific operations efficiency.

Diamond uses Hexachrome because it requires fewer plates. Fewer plates means better

margins or savings passed on to customers. Less need to change inks means that there is less

make-ready and make ready is shorter. Hexachrome also allows for better overall color integrity

because of the amount of colors involved.

Also, because Hexachrome has a larger color gamut it allows for possible RGB

workflow. Hexachrome also allows Diamond to offer is customers packages that stand out on the

shelf. The shift to Hexachrome was a natural change for the packaging industry because it is not

uncommon to use up to 12 spot colors for any given job. All of these things allow Diamond to

have greater operation efficiency. More operational efficiency allows Diamond to be more

competitive in the marketplace and offer its customers the best price.

Diamond Packaging, specializing in flexible packaging, uses mostly paperboard and

plastic substrates. They primarily use web flexography and offset printing. Examples of their

printing capabilities have been highlighted in several case studies. Recently, Diamond developed

the Diamond TruCOLORsm

color system. This revolutionary system makes use of several new

technologies.

Diamond’s case studies document marketing applications of

their printing capabilities. They use a Creo Trendsetter computer-to-

plate digital thermal platesetter to produce plates for offset printing

from digital images. In designing the package for X3D technologies’

eXtreme 3D OC system, UV printing and UV coating were

incorporated. This was most likely done using their offset printer. The

UV coating on the multi-color graphics gave them a look of greater Offset Printing

Diamond Packaging 6

depth. Diamond also produced X3D’s 3D comic book packages. Using 24-point rainbow

holographic foilboard, and four-color printing over 2 hits of opaque white, they were able to

achieve a very appealing look.

Fragrance and cosmetics company Puig-USA contracted Diamond to print, package, and

ship their men’s fragrance line. To assure fast, consistent and eye-catching prints, Diamond

utilized offset printing. Here the use of the digital platesetter provided optimal color registration

and sharpness. L’Oreal USA’s & Matrix Essentials’ Trix Remix line of hair products was sent

Diamond for production of a promotional release. Four-color offset printing was used with the

application of a satin aqueous coating. This provided the soft but edgy look that L’Oreal and

Matrix Essentials were looking for. Diamond also selected to produce packages for their holiday

line of products. They used an offset printer with transparent PMS color inks and UV coating to

print on the 22 point holographic foilboard. Two hits of opaque white ink were also applied for

text to create greater contrast with the vivid foilboard.

Murray Sons & Co., Ltd. was looking to package the entire Dunhill cigars line. Diamond

used imported Colorplan paperboard, and printed in multiple colors, metallic included, with a UV

satin coating. The outer sleeve and cigar tubes were printed on with metallic ink. This was all

done on an offset printer.

As for web flexography printing, Diamond uses it in limited applications. Web

flexography is intended for shorter runs, and Diamond’s narrow web flexo printer can print up to

eight colors, foil stamp, and die cut in line. This provides an economic alternative to offset

printing for small quantities and combination runs.

A standout example is the Gillette® for Women Venus™ product line. All of the printing

was done on an offset press. Pantone and special mix colors of UV inks were used, and UV

coating was applied in-line. Because the package consisted of two substrates: Domtar 14 point

white clay coated news and 12 point amorphous polyester, the inks were tested on several

substrates to perfect the color matching. The Domtar paperboard was chosen for its recycled

content, and resemblance to virgin paper, and the amorphous polyester was chosen for its clarity,

and gloss.

Diamond recently introduced their d2 Proofing system. These digital proofs are created

using a DuPont Cromalin® iG4 Digital Water Proofing System. They are presently offered on

SBS, recycled and foil paperboards in custom and pantone colors. Gamut Enhanced inks and

media are used.

Diamond’s new TruCOLORsm

system is a combination of printing and color control

technologies that can produce beautiful prints that greatly surpass the look of the standard four-

color printing process. This system uses cutting-edge color matching to ensure top quality, while

remaining an economically sound option. The TruCOLOR system can reproduce over 1000

colors, and print near-photographic images using offset printing. This system incorporates

frequency-modulated screening. Normally amplitude modulated screening is used with offset.

Amplitude modulated screening varies the size of dots to reproduce shades and color blends;

Diamond Packaging 7

however the frequency is constant. Frequency modulated screening varies the number of dots

while maintaining constant size. Because the dot size is only 20 microns, this eliminates all

possible screen angle issues. The color to color transitions are unmatchable by way of the four-

color printing process.

Diamond goes through many stages of optimization to produce the packages mentioned

above, taking into consideration the nature of the product, the targeted market and the durability

and safety requirements necessary for shipment and distribution. Their variety of printable

substrates, color selections, coatings, and their ability to combine many other tasks in-line make

for a very efficient but effective system.

Diamond Packaging main market is in folding cartons and displays for such companies as

L’Oreal, 3M, The Gillette Company and Godiva as well as others. Over the years Diamond has

won numerous awards for their unique packages and amazing graphics. In 2005 they won three

awards at the Premier Print Awards Competition where they competed against 5200 companies

from different printing and graphic art firms (Diamond Packaging Wins… 2005). Diamond used

special graphic techniques for L’Oreal USA/ Matrix holiday packaging. The carton had .022 SBS

foil board with holographic foil stamping and embossing holographic that was chosen because it

gave the impression of snowflakes and there were also special color inks used and matte UV

coating to really make the package stand out (Diamond Packaging Wins… 2005).

Gillette’s Mach 3 holiday package, that Diamond Packaging designed, kept with the idea

that the Mach 3 was ―breaking the performance barrier.‖ The graphics were custom designed to

help complement the foil board. Then

they hot foil stamped the back panel, which really brought the

product out, but this also removed a panel from pervious versions

reducing the overall cost of the package (Mach 3 Holiday Gift

Set).

Through Diamond Packaging’s involvement in the

Global Packaging Alliance they are able to help companies that

work internationally to save money. In 1997 they had their first

aligned project that was the launch of Gillette’s Mach 3 razor.

What Diamond did was to design a package for Gillette and

then they figured out a way to get more copies per sheet.

Through this alliance Diamond communicated with a company in Germany and gave them all the

specs and described exactly what they did. This helped to save Gillette 20%, which added up to

be $1 million because they did not have to recreate the package in Germany or any other country.

Also the US and German product launches were only 6 months apart where it would of taken

years before because Diamond was involved in this Global Alliance (Thomas, 2002).

What Diamond is good at is keeping their employees from talking about their projects.

This is one thing that really helps to make Diamonds product launches so great. They designed a

package for Polaroid right in Rochester and Kodak had no idea it was even going on because of

Holiday Package

Diamond Packaging 8

Diamonds secrecy. After the product launched Kodak called

Diamond and wanted the same package and Diamond knows

that one good launch can lead to many others so that is why

secrecy is so important (Thomas, 2002). Another recently

released product that Diamond Packaging designed for was

Coty’s Shania perfume. In order to ensure that the package fully

represented Shania Diamond worked closely with Coty while

designing both the gift pack and fold carton. The gift carton

was .024 SBS paperboard, which was embossed and had gold

foil accents and the gold stars were used to represent both the

Stetson brand as well as Shania’s country background. The

folding carton used flexo gold ink and pearlized matte aqueous coating on the pink carton to

really make it stand out (Diamond Partners with… 2005).

What Diamond really tries to do is to differentiate them selves from their competition

through innovation and using leading technology to really stand out. They have an all-digital

workflow that helps to improve print quality and turn around time. They also have methods for

direct printing on multiple surfaces including plastics and an advanced quality system for

improving color control. Diamond packaging is continually exceeding their customer’s

expectations and pushing the envelope and this can be seen by the awards that they constantly

win.

Diamond Packaging is a full-service packaging supplier.

They specialize in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, personal

care, specialty food markets, and software. They have a large client

base and even more and more companies contacting them every

month they still are one of the leaders in the packaging industry today.

One of their main goal is to differentiate themselves form other

companies with their innovation of packages and their unique designs.

With their numerous awards given every year they excel with excellence in their designs and

printing quality along with customer satisfaction. New investments in the Heidelberg

Speedmaster offset press and Bobst Sprintera die cutter is helping Diamond keep pace with other

companies in their expansion, faster turnaround and the finest graphics reproduction. Their

involvement in the Global Packaging Alliance, assisting in packaging now across the world, they

are expanding their clientele greatly.

Heidelberg Speedmaster

Kodak Display Packaging

Diamond Packaging 9

Sources:

―Mach 3 Holiday Gift Set.‖ Diamond Packaging-Case Studies. Diamond Packaging.

<http://www.diamondpackaging.com/casestudies.asp?studyid=11>.

―Diamond Partners with Coty on Shania Launch.‖ Diamond Packaging-Fall Newsletter. Diamond

Packaging. <http://www.diamondpackaging.com/newsletters_fall05_articles.asp>.

―Diamond Packaging Wins Three Awards in 2005 Premier Print Awards Competition.‖ Diamond

Packaging-Recent News. 25 Aug. 2005. Diamond Packaging. 06 Feb 2006.

<http://www.diamondpackaging.com/news.asp?type=recent>.

Thomas, Kathy Quinn. ―Packaging Exec Thinks Outside of the Boxes.‖ Rochester Business Journal

(2002). 06 Feb 2006. <http://www.diamondpackaging.com/news.asp?type=feature>.

Dackert, Andrea. ―Manufacturing firm shines after staying in New York‖. Rochester Business Journal. 8

April 2005.

Durkalski, Esther. ―A Diamond in the Rough‖. Paperboard Packaging, March 2003.

Becker, Carolyn. ―Finisher’s Feature: A Diamond Out of the Rough‖. Inside Finishing Magazine.

February/March 2002.

www.globalpackaging.com