中文Spanish pre-press provider Puntes Packaging Partners has become one of the first European tradeshops to adopt Esko Quartz technology, supplying advanced flexographic plates to customers in Spain, France, Belgium and Portugal. The move follows Puntes’ recent acquisition of French tradeshop Art Media Graphic (AMG) and signals a clear bet on higher-quality, more consistent flexo platemaking.
Puntes has served printers in France and Belgium since 2008, so the AMG acquisition — based in Gournay-en-Bray, northeast of Paris — was a natural extension. AMG arrived as a long-standing Esko customer with an integrated Esko environment, which made merging the two businesses straightforward and let them standardise processes and swap expertise. The deal also strengthens Puntes’ local presence and flexible-packaging capabilities in France.
Sergio Montanes Cubero, marketing and sales manager at Puntes, described the Quartz investment as a logical step in a long innovation commitment. “We have already seen the benefits of advanced Esko technologies such as Crystal screening, and Quartz allows us to take that to the next level,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to deliver even greater detail, smoother highlights and improved print stability for demanding packaging applications.”
Operationally, Puntes is using its Quartz-equipped production in Spain to manufacture plates for the French market, while the same capability will support customers in Portugal. That model combines centralised, tightly controlled plate production with the local customer relationships and service AMG provides in France. Establishing a production and service hub in France also shortens transport distances and shrinks the associated logistics footprint — a sustainability plus alongside the quality story.
Technically, Quartz optics image higher-frequency surface structures at 2,000 lpi (Q-Cells) with an imaging resolution of 4,000 ppi, nearly double the current industry standard. Esko says the microcells engraved into solid-ink areas markedly boost ink transfer, giving converters a route to match gravure print quality in flexography. The dual-optics system supports both legacy and forward-looking flexo platemaking through optimised Quartz Screening and complements the broader Crystal ecosystem in Esko’s digital flexo portfolio.
Pascal Thomas, Esko’s director of flexo product management, noted that with Quartz extending its established ecosystem, Puntes is well positioned to meet evolving European flexographic packaging demands while keeping the consistency, technical expertise and customer focus behind its growth.
For Montanes Cubero, the ambition is to be a long-term strategic partner offering the same quality, service and capacity for innovation in every market served. “Automation, innovation and process standardisation will remain fundamental to our growth as we continue investing in technologies that help our customers become more competitive,” he said.
The Puntes story illustrates a broader European trend: regional pre-press specialists consolidating and upgrading to premium plate technologies to serve cross-border packaging supply chains more reliably.
Source: Labels & Labeling (Puntes adopts Esko Quartz, 08 October 2026).
Puntes’ move is part of a quiet consolidation reshaping European prepress. As brand owners demand tighter colour control, faster turnarounds and consistent plates across borders, independent tradeshops are either upgrading to premium technologies or merging to achieve scale. Puntes’ acquisition of AMG and adoption of Quartz together illustrate both moves at once.
The cross-border logic is compelling. A Spanish production hub feeding France, Belgium and Portugal combines the cost and control advantages of centralised platemaking with the trust and responsiveness of local service. For converters, that means fewer variables in plate supply and a partner who understands local language, regulation and relationship norms. It also shortens logistics — relevant both to cost and to the carbon footprint that increasingly features in customer audits.
For Esko, Puntes is a reference customer that validates Quartz beyond its home market and demonstrates the ecosystem’s fit for multi-country supply chains. AMG’s pre-existing Esko environment made the integration low-risk, a useful proof point for other tradeshops considering the upgrade.
The bigger signal is that plate quality, not just price, is becoming the competitive battleground in European flexo prepress. As packaging specs tighten and recyclability pressures push substrate complexity upward, converters will lean on tradeshops that can guarantee consistency job to job. Puntes is positioning squarely for that demand.
The risk in any cross-border plate strategy is service latency — a centralised hub must never feel distant to a local customer. Puntes mitigates this through AMG’s French presence and a deliberate local-relationship model. If it holds, the template is exportable to other European corridors. If it slips, competitors offering purely local plate supply will exploit the gap. Either way, Puntes has made a clear, confident bet on premium quality as the differentiator.
Customers, for their part, gain predictability. A plate that performs identically from Spain to Portugal to France removes a variable in colour-critical packaging runs and shortens the path from artwork approval to saleable output. In an industry where a single off-spec batch can trigger costly recalls or reruns, that consistency is quietly valuable. Puntes is effectively selling reliability across borders, with Quartz as the technical proof.
