Pre-press and workflow software solutions for packaging and label automation company, Hybrid Software, has taken to the recent PacPrint tradeshow in Melbourne to showcase its technologies.

Its Australasia sales manager Brenton King and international sales manager Jacques Staelens spoke to ProPack.pro about the company’s plans, the products it has in its portfolio and highlighted their purpose and the differences between the technologies.

“CloudFlow is our bread and butter; our champion product. But the whole idea of Hybrid as a company is to be an integration company. We want to integrate; we don’t just want to have a workflow system,” King said.

“We’re looking at ways of doing things differently. Our biggest customer globally is SGK – they do work on the requests and automation for clients like Mondelēz.

“Worldwide, they had 50 rips in but we’ve provided them with a consolidated, cluster cloud environment with 22 licenses as not everyone will be logged on at the same time because of the time differences.”

Some other international users of Hybrid Software’s technologies include Fort Dearborn, Amcor, All4Labels, Westrock, Trivium Packaging and Faller Packaging.

Hybrid Software has three main products, which are:

CloudFlow – CloudFlow is a modular production workflow suite for file processing, asset management, soft proofing and workflow automation.It is a web-based application platform specifically tailored for the packaging graphics with support for PDF, colour separation, trapping, screening, and proofing.

It utilises Hybrid Software’s Workspace technology which indexes file repositories while respecting the existing directory structure, automatically extracts relevant metadata and creates accurate thumbnails. It stores all its information in a database to make it available and searchable and allowing for centralised configuration and backup.

CloudFlow is also completely built on open standards, enables modularity and scalability with business growth and has the capability to run completely in the Cloud.

Packz – Packz shifts pre-press production into a higher gear with its blend of automated actions and dedicated pre-press tools. With its editing and quality assurance functions, the professional PDF editor makes designs print-ready for any printing process.

Packz aims to enrich designs with priming and finishing separation, and also handles ink sets and object-based screening, applies trapping and generates dynamic marks and panels.

The application also produces seasonal packaging and personalised labels with the VDP wizard, produces warp and 3D visualisations, and optimises substrate utilisation using numerous step and repeat solutions.

iC3D – iC3D is a real-time, all-in-one package design software that lets businesses generate live 3D virtual mockups on-the-fly. Encompassing all design applications and model types, it allows cartons, labels, flexibles, bottles, shrink wraps, POS/POP and in-store visualisation to be seamlessly combined.

With fast operating and rendering speeds, iC3D also offers a level of packaging design versatility that allows creatives to indulge their ingenuity while delivering faster turnaround and up to 80 per cent reduction in the design life cycle.

It is available in three modules – iC3D suite, iC3D designer and iC3D modeller.

“We brought to market these solutions based on customer requests. It is one of our missions to listen very carefully to our customers and deliver on their needs. Our customers dictate what we must do. That’s the only way going forward,” Staelens said.

“On the other hand, the bulk of our partners that use our groups technologies – like HP Indigo and Canon – are all moving towards digital. That bucket is growing, so we need to be able to have the right tools that can allow their technologies to perform optimally.”