Tau 330 is the label makers’ answer to the shift in customer requirements
Anyone buying shampoo, detergent, or a bottle of wine, and who is not loyal to a particular brand will reach for the article with with the most appealing label. In Great Britain, it is safe to assume that the label on that article was likely produced by The Label Makers (http://www.labelmak.co.uk/).
The UK converter has been designing and manufacturing prime labels for leading British brands from the Fast Moving Consumer Goods market for 50 years.Winners of both the FlexoTech and Digital Printer awards, a key factor of The Label Makers’ success has been continued investment in the latest technologies, as evidenced by the impressive array of equipment at their production site inWest Yorkshire,England. “We have always bought the best technology so we can o er our customers the best labels” says David Webster, Managing Director.
“We were faced with an increasing customer demand for shorter print runs. The trend has shifted in the retail sector to produce and deliver short runs of 10,000 – 20,000 labels at short notice. The trouble with flexo print was that regardless of job size, the print prparations would take 3-4 hours – even if the print itself would only take seven minutes. The economic factors for this production method were highly ine cient.” They entered the digital arena
in 2011 with a Xeikon 3300 but were not able to shift as much production to digital as their market demanded because of productivity and media restrictions.
The Label Makers found the solution at Label Expo 2012, where the 7 color, 13” wide Durst Tau 330 UV inkjet digital label press running at 157 fpm was introduced. “The Tau 330 features the print width
that we require to produce items like shampoo labels. Print quality is comparable to screen print and the ink options for white, orange and violet allow us to cover most of the Pantone color space.”
The company had gained experience with digital work ow and their in-house designers were familiar with the Esko RIP and color manage- ment that comes standard with the Durst Tau 330.
The Label Makers’ new Durst Tau 330 was installed in April 2013, the rst in Great Britain. “Someone had to jump in first and the results are very exciting” says Webster. Variable data printing and fast, inexpensive, high quality production for short and long runs allowed The Label Makers to tailor solutions to customer needs. Existing customers liked the high print quality and cost e ciency. New customers were impressed by the exibility the system offered.
The Label Makers operators were impressed by the outstanding engineering of the Durst Tau 330, designed for speed and print quality but also to minimize media waste. And Durst Tau inks (CMYK, White, Orange and Violet) fit in a single pallet. “Flexo required us to have a stock amounting to £40,000 (>$62,000), for all the color variations
our customers demand. And you need 2kg (4.4lbs) of ink per color to even start up the machine.”
“We looked at quite a few competing inkjet technologies, but we found that it was the Tau 330 that ticked all the boxes for us” say David Webster. The investment has already paid off for The Label Makers: financially, but also as confrmation that quick and efficient tailor-made customer solutions are at the heart of everything they do.
