Diamond Packaging

Principles of Printing - Professor Garno

Winter 2005-06

Curtis Gippe, Nell Doyle, Karyn Lewis,

Bradford Johnson, Mike Demler, Wallace Patterson
 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 2
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
Gillette’s Mach3 razor
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

Diamond Packaging 3
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 4
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 5
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 6
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 Holiday Package
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

Diamond Packaging 7
 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
Kodak Display Packaging
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
Heidelberg Speedmaster
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.

Diamond Packaging 8
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

Diamond Packaging 9