At Labels & Specialty Products, we continue to work towards being the best label partner for our customers. As we look for opportunities to improve, we look at 3 areas: providing cost savings, decreasing lead times, and printing a higher quality product.
Here are 3 investments that L&SP has made in the past 6 months to advance our business with technology.
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BETTER LEAD TIMES | Turret Rewinder
Over time, our team recognized that one area that we were seeing a bottle neck was our finishing department. Many presses feed our finishing department and our conventional rewinders weren’t cutting it (literally and figuratively). With a lot of our customers having a need for many small rolls, we knew automation was going to be the answer. As a result, we made the decision to invest in a Turret Rewinder, which has since increased our efficiencies 4X. Rewinding that previously was taking 20 hours, have been cut down to 5 hours – talk about impressive! Along with rewinding at record speed, we can also print the tail label. This gives an added option for our customers to put text such as, purchase order, lot +, date/time produced, etc. to name a few options.
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IMPROVED PRINT QUALITY | New Plate Technology
Flexographic printing technology might be an established printing method, but the industry continues to work towards advancement in quality. Recently, we have transitioned our plates to flat top dot plates. These new plates are game changing allowing extremely fine resolution and ultra-smooth gradients.
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COST EFFICIENCY | Digital Finishing Line
One challenge with small run jobs on our digital press has always been the limitations when it comes to unique capabilities. With our digital printer being toner based, some of the more unique finishes must run flexo, which can be more expensive for short run jobs due to set up costs and plate charges. In 2020, we added a new digital finishing line that rewinds more efficiently, but also gives us the ability to add many different finishes, including cast and cure, cold foil and different varnishes, just to name a few. This gives us the ability to run more short run jobs digitally, without sacrificing the unique finish. This is great for beverage labels including wine labels, beer labels and more food and beverage primary labels.
One thing that is certain about technology is that it is always evolving. At Labels and Specialty Products, we work hard to stay on the cutting edge for our customers. As we grow, we continue to look for opportunities to improve for our customers and be the best label partner. In doing so, we continue to make investments to better our quality, decrease our lead times and deliver cost savings.
