Lombardi Brand Guidelines: The Brescia Die-Cutter Maker That Moved Into Flexo Presses

A Brescia engineer’s company.

Lombardi Converting Machinery builds flexographic printing presses for labels and flexible packaging in Brescia, in northern Italy. The Italian trade magazine MetaPrintArt, writing in December 2016, described it as founded by the engineer Claudio Lombardi in Brescia, and said that over the preceding decades it had built a strong name in die-cutting equipment, with more than 1,000 machines installed worldwide. A May 2017 report in the same magazine said Claudio Lombardi had begun by producing label and tag cutters before his company moved on to designing narrow-web flexo presses.

The company’s age is usually given in round numbers. When Lombardi held its first showroom event in February 2018, World of Print referred to the technologies it had developed over “30 years of activity”, and the company’s own site now speaks of more than three decades of experience with modular in-line flexo machines. The trading company today is Lombardi Converting Machinery S.p.A.

The turn to printing came after 2000. According to MetaPrintArt, the company judged the die-cutting market saturated in the new century and invested in research and development for flexography. Over the following decade Claudio Lombardi and his three sons built up manufacturing capacity, selling mainly into southern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East; the 2017 article named Lorenzo and Massimo as sales directors and Nicola as marketing manager. In 2014 Lombardi began working in western and northern Europe through the Hancock-RC Group in the Netherlands, and in December 2016 it named RR PRINT A/S as its agent in the Nordic countries. The same 2016 article said Lombardi was doubling its production capacity and planning a permanent showroom, while keeping manufacturing in northern Italy.

Synchroline, Invicta and modules.

The label flagship has long been Synchroline, a fully modular narrow-web flexo press. MetaPrintArt reported in February 2016 that a Synchroline 330 had gone to Computer Forms Co. in Amman, Jordan, after the buyer compared five international suppliers, and listed the materials the press can print, from BOPP, PVC, PE and PET films to paper, thermal paper, cardboard and laminates. The same article said Lombardi had used social media, Twitter in particular, to build its presence in foreign markets.

The February 2018 showroom described by World of Print shows how the company assembles a line. More than 80 label printers saw a Synchroline 430 configured with eight UV flexo units, followed by Bravo, an inline flat screen unit that the report called a Lombardi patent, and Toro, an inline hot-foil unit with a system to save foil. Alongside it ran a digital-flexo hybrid developed with Domino: Digistar, a UV inkjet engine followed by Lombardi’s own semi-rotary flexo and cold-foil units, which had launched at Labelexpo in 2017.

For flexible packaging the range adds Invicta. At an open week in Brescia in March 2019, reported by MetaPrintArt and Packaging South Asia, Lombardi presented an Invicta 630 with eight sleeve printing units and automatic sleeve change, built so that it could be turned into a pressure-sensitive label press by adding die-cutting and waste recovery. Claudio Lombardi called the approach extreme modularity: the customer adapts the press instead of replacing it. Both reports said it was the first open-doors event since Enrico Gandolfi and Giovanni Perego had joined the company the year before.

The newest label press is Smartline. In June 2025 INKISH reported its launch at an open house at the Brescia headquarters as an evolution of the Synchroline platform for paper and film labels, with a 430 mm print width, eight UV flexo stations, die-cutting and rail-mounted modules for delam/relam, cold foil and a turn bar. The first installation, it said, was at Print Panache in India.

How label machinery presents itself.

Label presses are built for converters, the printers who turn reels of paper and film into the labels on bottles, jars and cartons. A narrow-web press is usually a long inline machine: the web unwinds at one end, passes through a row of printing units, often with UV curing between them, then through foil, varnish and die-cutting stations before the finished labels are rewound as a reel at the other end.

The makers present themselves through that machinery. Their brochures and websites show the web path running from unwinder to rewinder, rows of identical printing units, die stations and close-ups of printed label reels, and they describe presses by print width, the processes a line can combine and the materials it can run, from self-adhesive paper to film and carton.

Much of the selling happens in person. Makers run demonstration halls where converters can watch a press run their own jobs: Gallus says its Experience Center in St. Gallen covers nearly 2,500 square metres and also shows partner machines, and Nilpeter listed technology centres in Denmark, the United States, Thailand, India and Brazil in 2019. Gallus asks converters who want a live demonstration to arrange it through Heidelberg’s local sales and service units.

Trade fairs set the rhythm of launches. Labelexpo, held in Brussels for Europe and in Chicago for the Americas, is where many presses are first shown: Nilpeter launched its FA-Line at Labelexpo in Brussels in 2005, according to FLEXO magazine. The makers in this guide range from family companies to subsidiaries of larger press groups, and each guide sets out who founded the brand, who owns it now and what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made in Italy, said plainly.

Lombardi presents itself through engineering and origin. Its website carries the line “Advanced Printing Technology” and the phrase “Made in Italy, shared with the world”, and its company page describes research on two fronts, mechanics and electronics, with quality and simplicity as guiding principles. The company says it has installations in more than 100 countries. Its machine names follow a pattern: the Latin Invicta for the packaging press, and short Italian words such as Bravo, Toro and Volo for add-on modules.

Recognition has come from its home industry. In 2017 Claudio Lombardi received the Pollicione d’Oro, an award given once a year by a jury of entrepreneurs, lecturers and journalists to encourage research in the printing industry, which had then been running for 25 years. MetaPrintArt said the citation pointed to his updated narrow-web flexo designs and to his regular presence at Labelexpo shows in Europe, the United States and Asia.

Open houses are a recurring part of how Lombardi shows its machines. The three-day showroom of February 2018, the week of private demonstrations in March 2019 and the Smartline launch of May 2025 all took place at the Brescia site, putting presses in front of label printers rather than in a catalogue.

For a design guide, Lombardi shows how a Brescia press builder founded by an engineer frames its machines through Made in Italy language, modular naming and open-house demonstrations. Compare OMET and Prati, two more Italian names in label converting. For this guide we use a deep ink blue, a crimson and a warm grey on film white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lombardi’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.