Chr. Brynildsen & Co a.s - Since 1958 one of Norways leading Screen Printers

Just 20 minutes out of Oslo to the north, situated in a modern Industrial Park is Chr. Brynildsen & Co a.s, 1.700 m2 of modern concete building. 3 co-owners, Karsten Andreassen, Thor Olav Rokkerud and Erik Brynildsen presently own and run the company.

Since the company was founded by Christian Brynildsen, Paal Andersen and Erland Bøhn in 1958, there has been split ownership, with the owners running each their part of the company. Today, Karsten is the production manager, Thor the marketing and sales manager, and Erik is the tecnical and general manager.

Award winning company
Once you enter the lobby, you realize that the company has participated in, and won a lot of competitions over the years. One wall is decorated with Golden Image (Golden Squeegee) Awards from SGIA (SPAI), a small shelf holds a few FESPA Awards, and another wall is covered by NSF (The Norwegian Screen Printing Association) Gold, silver and Bronze prices as well as «under the Lupe» prizes from the norwegian general Graphic prize Awards.

Self adhesive and Plastic printing
The smallest part of our market, representing about 20% of the turnover is self adhesive and plastics printing. Beeing a pioneer in the norwegian market in the field of self Adhesive materials, Christian Brynildsen started importing Kleen-Stick self adhesive materials back in the early sixties. Over the years both Fasson and 3M have been regular and good suppliers to the company's production, and contributed both in their field to a quality profile also in this market.

Fleetmarking and decals are other fields where the company's production has won prizes. Today production of Plastic products for vacuum forming is another important field that has been developed together with a local vacuum forming Company. Licensed products are printed in 4 colour and vacuum formed to become children lamps that are beeing marketed all over Europe.

Textile printing
The second part is the Textile printing, counting for about 30% of the turnover. Having worked for more than 25 years with Fruit of the Loom products, we try to stay out of the low price part of the printed textile market, and market textile printing as well as our textiles as Quality products. Not without a certain success. With up to 8 Colors printing capacity and intermediate curing, of course a little above average printing results can be achieved. For many years close cooperation with Repro-Team, another Association member, has resulted in high quality 4 colour separations and printing on textile. Printing about 34 lines per cm with perfect registration has collected a few of the prizes on the wall.

Displays and boxes in mini corrugated
Our company's main production is in the field of Display and boxes for Direct Mail and other special applications. Beeing well equipped with two automatic presses for this production with UV and conventional drying, any combination of matt and glossy conventional or UV is possible. However 85% of the display production is now UV printed. Many customers accept the company's proposal to keep the display unit as simple as possible, preferably a one colour print with texts and logotypes in negative white. This keeps the surface protected by the glossy UV ink, and does not take too much attention away from the product displayed.

Our own in-house design department construct and design the various models, and prototypes are delivered within 24 hours. With good cooperation with the local Die-maker, dies are made in a couple of days, and often a few hundred or a few thousand displays or boxes are delivered within a week or so. This is of course also due to good equipment in the finishing department, both manual and automatic Die-cutting, capable of speeds up to 1.500 cuts an hour. Semi automatic glueing and experienced staff makes the finishing touch, and a high production outcome.

Stable workforce
With a good mix of female and male staff, and young and old, the average employment time in the company is 17 years. Most employees are trained to operate several machines and work in several departments. The most static jobs are rotated within the department to avoid work related sick leaves. The last 4 FESPA exhibitions have been visited by a majority of the workforce. Planning for this visit begins about 2 years before the show, with the employees saving about £ 20.- each month on a special savings account. When the FESPA gets closer, as much information on the show as possible is beeing distributed internally, and the company's own time-schedule for the visit is set up. The employees pay half the basic cost of the trip, travel and hotel, anything extra is paid by the company. Last summer in Lyon a very nice dinner at Le Alexandrin was incorpoated, and the trip was very successful both professionally and privately. Taking the TGV to Paris and finishing off with a lunch sightseeing at the river Seine before flying home was a perfect end to many employees first trip to France. FESPA'99 is going to be held in Munich, Germany. We are planning to make this a part of our 40 years celebration, and invite all employees to join for a long weekend in Munich.

Environmental concious production
1984 Erik Brynildsen started developing a solvent free screen cleaning and reclaiming unit, aiming to save about 90% of the solvent consumption in the screen Reclaiming aerea. Over 4 years 2 units were built, the goal was achieved but the unit was too expensive to build and maintain so it was not possible to market the system. However, since then the system has been in use in the company, and the use of solvents has been drastically reduced. Also the transition to more UV printing has been a positive element in the environmental field.

Today about 85% of the Display & cardboard work is UV, and about 70% of the total production. Digital Pre-press and Direct Projection. Allthough Chr. Brynildsen & Co were early computer users in the administative field, with thir own estimating beeing computerized in 1975, the Graphic field has been a recent development. Today one graphic network with both PC's and MAC's also includes Phototypesetter for films up to A-3 size, and Laserprinter for proofs, as well as plotter for Self adhesive films and masking films. The Direct Projection Camera was installed after the last FESPA, and is calculated to pay for itself within 3 years. Obvious savings both in time and films will result in more productive time for the pre-press department.

Digital Printing cooperation initiative
The company has taken the initiative to a cooperation between 7 companies both in Oslo and out of town, to start a joint company for digital printing. Allready after a few months operation this company has won a prize in the SGIA Golden Image competition in the category digital printing electrostatic. The prize was for a poster printed on paper and laminated for indoor use. But the company Elektroprint a.s is capable of delivering self adhesive products of 3M Scotchprint quality with several years guarantee, and is delivering several Windowgraphics and floorgraphics jobs, as well as special applications on Soft Vinyl Sides for transportation trailers. The main goal for this company is however to give the participants a low treshold to enter into Digital production, and create a platform for training of both tecnical staff and sales personel. The cooperation is also in the field of Screen Printing, as the participants have quite a diverse production, and alltogether are able to solve most types of screen printing jobs.

Chr. Brynildsen & Co a.s - Since 1958 one of Norways leading Screen Printers