"Goldsmiths of packaging"... since 1909, gilding has been at the heart of Wauters' history. Today, this signature is expressed through a new investment and new technical and innovative know-how, opening up new perspectives in packaging.
From gold leaf to industrial innovation
Originally, Charles Wauters set up a leather gilding workshop in the Marais district of Paris: bookbinding, book covers, leather desk blotters... Charles Wauters invented his own tools, developed Fixor (for gluing gold leaf, a product still marketed by Rougier & Plé), and developed equipment at the root of today's gilding profession.
An expert in gilding, Wauters transposes and sharpens its know-how from leather to cardboard, to collaborate today with the biggest names in Perfumery, Cosmetics and Spirits on high value-added packaging.
Year after year, the company equips itself with the most precise and specific technologies, such as cylinder hot stamping combined with an embossing unit, with a machine unique in the world developed in partnership with Steuer, which enables unparalleled precision on large hot stamping areas combined with an embossing unit.
As a natural extension of this, Wauters is now developing its cold stamping offer. Cutting-edge offset... for cold gilding
Last year, Eric and Thierry Wauters (4th generation of the company) decided to invest in a new offset press for the B.Pack site in Burgundy.
This year, the Villebon-sur-Yvette site will be equipped with Heidelberg's brand-new CX 104 press, unveiled exclusively at the China Print trade show. Wauters will be the first to benefit from this new-generation offset press, which is both more efficient and more ergonomic, with its unique, intuitive console that enables even larger printing formats with a sheet size of 720 x1040 mm.
At present, this equipment is complemented by Vinfoil's Optima cold stamping (or cold lamination) module. A new stage in the company's "gilding" know-how is developing in line with Wauters' exacting standards, and towards a technicality with multiple possibilities.
Cold marking, a simplified process
While cold stamping is not intended to replace hot stamping, it is an alternative and complementary process that offers three major advantages: performance, ecology and design.
The gilding is transferred directly to the offset press.
Unlike hot foil stamping, which requires the use of a gilding iron tool, cold foil stamping is transferred via an offset plate to the substrate using glue. No need for a tool, no need to set up the substrate on a new machine - everything happens in-line on the new offset.
Cold stamping enables reprinting on the gilding film. A juice, a gradient, a four-color process, a direct-tone decoration - the design is set free. There's no need for a covering white for texts or decorations: we work in reserve, directly on the cardboard.
The technical nature of cold stamping guarantees precision, agility, flexibility and cadence...
High-quality rendering
Overlays are made easy thanks to 100th register quality: no need to set up the board on another machine, cold lamination is carried out directly on the offset machine. Precision is the order of the day. From solids to fine fades, gradations are sublimated thanks to unrivalled stitch finesse.
Gone are the days of covering white in several passes to regain purity; the cold foil reserve can be imagined as a solid, for example, to make way for four-color process printing on the back of a pack, or with incredible finesse for text, labels or gencodes.
A CSR process
The advantages of this technology include its ecological virtues: it saves time, materials and energy. Thanks to its highly precise application, the cold stamping process reduces waste. The used film reels are then taken back by the supplier who, after a demetallization process, recycles the PET by remetallizing it for a second life. The production of gilding tools is no longer necessary, saving both materials and energy.
Performance, ecology, design: cold stamping opens up new horizons for the world of high-end packaging.
