Trimatt is helping food and beverage manufacturers rethink packaging with sustainable printing, reduced inventory, and smarter warehouse management with its ColourStar AQ V system.
While packaging is the final touch for a product, it is also the first thing consumers notice.
Compare two identical gifts, but with a slight difference – one that is ribboned and one that is untouched. While both products serve the same function, the well-packaged gift feels more like a gift. Understanding this, brands across industries have leveraged packaging designs that can elevate their products to a premium feel.
But behind every label or printed surface lies an intricate process that connects sustainability, production efficiency, and cost control. In the food and beverage industry, where branding is imperative in a concentrated and competitive market, manufacturers find themselves struggling.
Take inventory and waste for example. What happens to boxes filling up your warehouse, collecting dust and immobilised due to neglect for years? Answer: landfill.
According to Matt Johnson, founder of print and product automation technology supplier Trimatt Systems, Australian companies face a common challenge when it comes to packaging and branded materials.
“When food and beverage companies are looking to purchase branded materials, they are met with a high minimum order quantity (MOQ),” he said.
Businesses that require only 5,000 packaging materials have no choice but to purchase 50,000 to meet the MOQ. Travelling around and meeting businesses that have done this, Johnson has witnessed what happens to the remainder of unused material.
“If businesses have raw material in their warehouse that’s taking up space, they dump it to make more space,” Johnson added.
Additionally, with regulations and trends surrounding packaging, food manufacturers find it difficult to make capacity to stay afloat. As a result, efficient and sustainable packaging solutions are hard to come by. The Melbourne-based equipment manufacturer aims to simplify that process while helping businesses minimise waste and improve operational flow through Trimatt’s ColourStar AQ V system.
“Just-in-time” production model
For businesses packaging raw material into paper-based packaging, bulk orders are often the only option. Trimatt’s ColourStar AQ V eliminates the need to store and hold volumes of pre-printed stock while tightening packaging production processes. Johnson said the system’s name reflects its design.
“The ‘AQ’ stands for aqueous and ‘V’ meaning versatile,” he said.
The ColourStar system prints directly onto paper-based packaging using waterproof and scratch-resistant inks. Its versatility comes from its ability to print on a range of porous media types. It features an integrated friction feeder, adjustable receiving tray, over 100mm height-adjustable print head, and conveyor.
It gives businesses a digital printing solution with a speed of 27 metres per minute. By allowing them to print on demand, Trimatt helps cut down on unnecessary storage and reduce waste. Companies can produce what they need, when they need it.
“The majority of our packaging machines are targeted at short-run printing directly onto sustainable packaging,” added Johnson.
The just-in-time production model doesn’t just reduce material waste – it also supports broader sustainability goals.
Sustainability in the background
Many food manufacturers previously relied on packaging shipped from overseas, sometimes from as far as China, adding freight emissions to an already resource-intensive supply chain.
With Trimatt’s local printing solution, those businesses can now bring production closer to home, reducing their carbon footprint and supporting local suppliers. Additionally, businesses are catalysing this change as Johnson highlighted that the willingness to bring branding locally, within their own factory, is growing.
“Because you’re producing your branded products just in time, precisely what you need, there is minimum waste,” he said. “Trimatt’s been able to provide a solution for businesses looking to fulfil their own branding on a local level.”
The company’s strategic focus on building solutions around sustainable packaging aims to enable businesses to move away from plastics and towards recyclable and compostable substrates. For food and beverage producers, that represents a sustainable and practical step forward.
Quality is king
While sustainable efforts and saving storage are commendable, quality still trumps those benefits. The ColourStar AQ V offers improvements in operational efficiency. Printing directly onto packaging eliminates the need for labels, separate design batches, and manual rework. The result is a cleaner, more streamlined workflow.
Adopting the technology, on the other hand, can be a challenge. Trimatt assists manufacturers in two ways. First, Trimatt’s technology integrates with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems such as SAP, allowing businesses to connect production data directly to their packaging output.
“By integrating with their ERP, it makes the workflow throughout their business smooth,” said Johnson.
By digitally printing directly onto the packaging, it removes the need for data re-entry – a challenge common in manual processes. Once the system is connected, production teams can monitor output, inventory, and batch details in real time. This integration ensures traceability from raw materials to finished goods.
Food and beverage manufacturers that must comply with strict traceability and labelling standards can ease the burden with this digital link without slowing production.
Second, the company offers training with a collaborative approach. Every machine is built in Melbourne, and once complete, customers are invited to the factory for in-person training. Trimatt’s team provides hands-on guidance to operators, followed by on-site support when the machinery is installed at the customer’s premises.
“We regularly go to the customer site and provide hands-on one-on-one training and production support,” said Johnson. “It’s very consultative and extremely collaborative.”
The easily integrable technology, paired with technical support and training, provides an efficient and sustainable packaging model for businesses without compromising quality.
A hands-off model
Trimatt’s clients range across industries from coffee, bakery, flour and medicinal. To help implement solutions tailored for specific needs, collaboration is valuable when integrating with ERP systems, where fine adjustments often need to be made to align software, data flow, and reporting structures.
Supported by cloud-based systems that allow remote access and diagnostics, Trimatt can log in to a client’s equipment when needed to provide technical support or software updates, minimising downtime.
“The systems generally run within the customer’s operations and network, and operators can just handle the product, not the data,” he said.
This “hands-off” model is one reason Trimatt’s technology has been adopted by players including Vistaprint, which has undergone a successful 12-month installation of the ColourStar system.
In an environment where consumers and regulators alike are demanding transparency and sustainability, Trimatt’s innovation offers a clear advantage. By reducing waste, lowering inventory demands, and enabling on-demand production, it provides manufacturers with a practical pathway to smarter operations.
Through its technology, service, and collaboration, Trimatt shows that packaging can be both sustainable and efficient – a combination that’s fast becoming essential in the modern food and beverage landscape.