中文Anderson & Vreeland Canada, a supplier with 65 years of experience in flexographic printing supplies and equipment, has appointed Hugo Simard as Technical Sales Representative, a hire that underscores how much the flexo supply channel still depends on seasoned, hands-on technical judgment rather than transactional selling. Simard brings more than three decades of experience in the flexographic printing and converting industry, with 32 years specifically in the field, and deep knowledge spanning both narrow-web and wide-web flexo. In a segment where the difference between a good and a bad outcome often hinges on substrate, anilox, and ink behaving together, that kind of expertise is the product.
Simard’s background covers leadership roles in technical management, machine installation and servicing, mechanical troubleshooting, color management, ink technology, printing applications, lamination processes, and prepress operations. That breadth is exactly what a flexo converter needs from its supplier’s representative, because flexo problems rarely respect neat category boundaries. A color complaint might trace back to an anilox cleaning issue; a web break might be a lamination tension problem; a registration drift might be a prepress artifact. A rep who has actually installed, serviced, and troubleshot the equipment is worth more than several who merely quote it.
Anderson & Vreeland supplies and distributes digital print and flexographic printing equipment to flexo printers, and is a privately held company with more than 50 years of experience serving the flexo industry. The firm bought the flexographic consumable assets from Grimco in 2023, a move that expanded its consumables footprint and made the technical-sales function even more central to how it serves customers. Adding a rep of Simard’s depth in Quebec, a province with a distinct flexo and label-printing community, is a logical continuation of that build-out.
The Quebec appointment also speaks to a quiet structural issue in the printing supply chain: an aging expert workforce. Many of the technicians who learned flexo on the pressroom floor in the 1980s and 1990s are approaching retirement, and the industry has not always done a good job of transferring that tacit knowledge to a younger generation. Bringing in a 32-year veteran to cover a territory is, among other things, a way to keep that knowledge in circulation and close to customers while the next cohort learns. It is succession planning expressed as a sales hire.
For Quebec’s flexo and label printers, the practical benefit is faster, better-local support. A technical sales representative who can show up, diagnose, and recommend without a long learning curve reduces downtime and improves first-time-right rates, both of which flow straight to the converter’s margin. In a market where converters are squeezed by brand owners on price and by labor costs on the floor, supplier-side expertise is one of the few levers they can pull without capital expenditure.
The appointment is a small story in isolation, but it is representative of how the flexo ecosystem actually works. Distributors and suppliers are not interchangeable parts; their value is concentrated in the people who connect the equipment and materials to the messy reality of a running press. By investing in a technically deep rep for a key Canadian region, Anderson & Vreeland is betting that, even as ordering goes digital, the human expertise layer of the flexo supply chain remains indispensable.
Source: PrintCAN (13 October 2026) – Anderson & Vreeland appoints Hugo Simard for Quebec.
The appointment also reflects the structure of the flexo supply business, where the representative is part of the product. Converters do not buy anilox rollers or mounting tape in isolation; they buy the confidence that the supplier understands their press, their substrate, and their deadlines. A technically deep rep shortens the distance between a problem on the floor and a workable fix, which is why distributors like Anderson & Vreeland invest in people rather than only in catalogs. Simard’s three decades also speak to the knowledge-transfer challenge the industry faces: the technicians who learned flexo hands-on in the 1980s and 1990s are retiring, and that tacit expertise, color management, ink behavior, tension and lamination, is hard to codify. Bringing in a veteran to cover Quebec is a form of live succession planning, keeping the knowledge close to customers while the next cohort learns. For Quebec’s distinct label and flexo community, local, fluent technical support reduces downtime and improves first-time-right rates, both of which flow straight to margin. In an era when ordering goes digital, the human expertise layer of the supply chain remains the differentiator that printers actually feel, and appointments like this are how it is preserved.
In a market where ordering increasingly moves online, the value of a technically fluent representative who can appear on site and resolve a press-side problem is if anything rising, not falling. Simard’s coverage of Quebec gives Anderson & Vreeland a stronger local presence in a region with a distinct flexo and label-printing community, and the hire underlines that, even as catalogs digitize, the human expertise layer of the supply chain remains the differentiator printers actually feel.
