How Litocart accelerated premium packaging prototyping with Summa V Series Invicta

By investing in Summa V Series Invicta 1015, Litocart has strengthened its ability to develop prototypes, short production runs, and customized packaging solutions, giving customers faster turnaround times and greater flexibility while reinforcing its position as a premium paper converting partner. 

A company built around craftsmanship, technology, and tailored solutions 

Some companies define themselves by their name. Others reveal their true identity through the people behind them. 

Founded in Colle Val d’Elsa (Siena, Italy) in 2018, Litocart perfectly embodies both. Positioned at the intersection of graphic arts and paper converting, the company inherited the assets of a printing business originally established in the 1970s by Alberto Vanzi. His son Bruno, together with partner Marco Campinoti, transformed that legacy into a modern production company by investing in next-generation technologies and adopting a business strategy focused on value-added paper converting. 

Both coming from managerial and commercial backgrounds within the graphic arts industry, Vanzi and Campinoti recognized that the commercial printing market was rapidly changing. Instead of competing on volumes alone, they repositioned the business toward the production of highly customized, sustainable, and profitable communication materials. 

Without significant financial resources, Litocart reinvested its early profits into increasingly automated printing and converting technologies while preserving the manual craftsmanship required to create premium products with distinctive finishing. 

At the same time, the company invested heavily in people, building a young and highly skilled team that welcomed three new employees in 2024, bringing the workforce to 28 collaborators and generating a turnover approaching €4 million in 2023. 

To further improve the production of packaging prototypes, displays, and short production runs, Litocart installed Summa V Series Invicta 1015 in October 2022. 

Becoming the preferred local partner for premium packaging 

Rather than pursuing large-scale packaging production for multinational companies, Litocart deliberately positioned itself as the preferred partner for premium brands and businesses throughout its region. 

Today, the company manages every stage of production internally—from prepress and offset printing to embellishment, die-cutting, folding, gluing, and packaging—while collaborating with trusted partners for digital printing and other complementary services. 

"We like to describe ourselves as the tailors of printing because we carefully observe both the customer and their product, understand their budget and objectives, and create a solution that fits perfectly," explains Marco Campinoti, Co-founder and Commercial Manager of Litocart. 

"Our strength lies in extremely fast response times, immediate quotations, and rapid deliveries, always at the right price." 

Its customer portfolio includes wineries, furniture manufacturers, fashion brands, industrial companies, food producers, and confectionery businesses serving international markets. 

To meet the demanding standards of food packaging, Litocart obtained BRCGS (British Retail Consortium Global Standard) certification and operates according to HACCP protocols, ensuring the highest production standards. 

The production department includes: 

Komori Lithrone S40 five-color B1 offset press  

Komori Lithrone S40 four-color B1 offset press  

Heidelberg Speedmaster B3 offset press  

The finishing department performs gloss, matte and drip-off varnishing, die-cutting, folding, gluing and hot foil stamping entirely in-house. 

The company processes an extensive variety of substrates, ranging from solid board and micro-flute corrugated board to premium textured, laid and embossed papers. 

Digital cutting to meet the demand for customization 

The packaging market continues to evolve toward shorter production runs, greater personalization, lower inventories, and increasingly demanding delivery schedules. 

For Litocart, this means managing dozens of production changes every day across projects ranging from folding cartons and countertop displays to catalogs, business cards and premium promotional materials, with production volumes varying from just a few hundred to several tens of thousands of pieces. 

"Every project is unique," explains Campinoti. 

"Paper type, dimensions, colours, finishing, embellishments, quality requirements, safety standards and durability all change from one job to another. When customers arrive with a sketch or a product to package, they expect an immediate proposal, a realistic prototype they can hold in their hands, approve, and quickly move into production." 

Years before investing in Summa, Litocart had already recognized the strategic importance of digital prototyping. 

In 2016, the company installed a multifunction digital cutting system with a 3 × 2 metre working area, equipped with a multi-tool head, camera and routing capabilities. At the same time, Litocart introduced ArtiosCAD for structural packaging design and expanded its team with specialists dedicated to packaging engineering and prototype development. 

The investment proved extremely successful, allowing the sales team to present fully functional prototypes during customer meetings and dramatically accelerate the approval process. 

However, as production increasingly focused on offset-format papers and boards, the large-format cutting system became oversized for the available prepress space and less efficient than required for daily prototype production. 

The search began for a more compact, agile solution. 

Why Litocart chose Summa V Series Invicta 1015 

In 2021, Litocart evaluated several digital cutting solutions before selecting Summa V Series Invicta 1015. 

The decision was driven by the machine's combination of structural robustness, precision, compact footprint and excellent value. 

Since the company did not require routing capabilities or heavy-duty production cycles for this application, Summa V Series Invicta 1015 proved to be the ideal solution. 

The system features a 1,520 × 1,020 mm vacuum table and a single-tool cutting head capable of accommodating cutting, kiss-cutting, creasing and marking tools, with the option of an integrated camera for automatic registration mark recognition. 

"We had already invested in a premium digital cutting system, so budget wasn't our primary concern," says Campinoti. 

"What really surprised us was finding a complete, robust, Made-in-Italy solution that was Industry 4.0 ready and offered such an attractive value." 

Beyond the machine specifications, Litocart immediately appreciated how intuitive the system was to operate. 

Today, operators from both the printing department and prepress can independently prepare jobs and perform cutting operations with minimal setup time. 

More recently, the company also began using Summa V Series Invicta 1015 to cut the rubber sheets required for reserve varnishing, eliminating the need to outsource this process. 

"Invicta is a digital cutting system designed on a human scale," Campinoti explains. 

"For a paper converting company like ours, it's exactly the right solution. Once the prototype has been approved, we can immediately produce the die and, whenever necessary, manufacture short production runs digitally before moving to conventional production." 

Faster prototyping, greater flexibility, new business opportunities 

Following installation and operator training—completed in a single day by the Summa technical team—Litocart immediately integrated Summa V Series Invicta 1015 into its daily workflow. 

Today, the system produces prototypes on solid board, micro-corrugated and triple micro-corrugated materials, while also cutting transparent PVC used to simulate packaging windows. 

Every day, the machine produces hundreds of samples, including folding cartons, wine boxes, displays, presentation cases, shopping bags and countless customized packaging concepts, developed either from customer projects or through the libraries available in V Studio. 

Although most prototypes are produced on unprinted materials, the optional camera allows accurate cutting and creasing of digitally or offset-printed sheets by automatically recognizing registration marks. 

By combining precision, compact dimensions and operational flexibility, Summa V Series Invicta 1015 has enabled Litocart to significantly accelerate prototype development while optimizing the use of production space and reducing time-to-market for new packaging solutions. 

The investment has delivered the right balance between flexibility, footprint and rapid return on investment, while preparing the company for future investments in additional Summa digital cutting technologies alongside new printing and embellishment solutions.