Bottom Line Coexistence: Combining Flexo and Digital for Value, Profitability

Plenty of jobs are coming in to feed the voracious appetite of your big, fast flexo press. But these days, a growing chunk of those orders may be for shorter run lengths. Customers that once ordered half a million labels at a time are still placing those orders, but more than a few of them may include 50 or 100 SKUs, some requiring different colors and all needing different copy. For some orders, the good news is that the substrate is the same and you know how to keep changeover times to about 15 minutes. But as orders like this continue to grow, what is happening to productivity—and your bottom line?

That's what Tim Smith, owner of The Label Smith in Pasadena, Texas was asking himself as he and his team juggled jobs that required copy and color changes every few thousand feet. "We had jobs of half a million labels, but with 60 copy changes," explains Smith. "We also had a growing number of short runs of only a few thousand labels. We'd been able to do them economically enough but as the overall volume grew, it simply wasn't sustainable on our flexo presses."

Tony Heinl, president of Repacorp, with plants in Wisconsin, Ohio and Arizona, had a similar problem. The manufacturer of stock, custom, and RFID labels works through a variety of distributors and was seeing a steady decline in quantities per order. He knew he would have to find a way to profitably handle the shorter runs. "You name it, we'll get into it," says Heinl. "It's the nature of our business. Although most of our business is long run, we were getting enough requests from distributors for shorter runs that we knew we had to make the leap to digital."

Run volume reflects trends

Smith's and Heinl's experiences reflect broad industry trends where run volume, in terms of number of jobs, is growing 3 to 4 percent annually and order frequency is increasing. But that frequency usually translates into shorter run lengths. Many jobs that were once 100,000-foot runs (or longer) have shrunk to 10,000 feet or less, and now may be printed multiple times during a year. Driving this is the growing number of SKUs in virtually every product category, test marketing activities, the need to update ingredient listings, consumer warnings and nutritional information, along with brand owners' desire to reduce the waste associated with outdated labels that are often thrown away.

"We see fewer orders for a year-long supply of labels," affirms Heinl. "Now that volume might be spread over five orders throughout the year." This gives brand owners the ability to change colors or information without throwing away large quantities of labels that became obsolete.

Underscoring this are customers' shifting expectations. "We get RFQs where having 13-to 20-inch digital presses is a specific requirement," says Smith. "Or there's a check box for digital presses in a required equipment list. If we can't check that box we aren't eligible to quote on a job."

"If you want your business to still be around five years from now you have to get into digital," affirms Smith. "It's become part of the bidding process."

This demand for digital puts pressure on conventional press owners. The challenge is that their flexo machines are not at their best for short runs. Set up and changeover times, plate costs, and ink and substrate waste make it difficult to remain profitable on many short runs. Although the toner and inkjet inks used for digital printing can be much more expensive than conventional inks, the elimination or reduction of those other costs make digital presses a natural fit for short runs. "Those savings amount to significant differences in overall costs," notes Heinl, " and they drop right to the bottom line."

Optimizing operations

Extensive testing and due diligence wound up with Smith opting for a Xeikon 3500 and Heinl starting what is now a fleet of four EFI Jetrion inkjet presses spread across his company's three locations. Each chose the system that best met their needs when acquired, and today these devices are helping The Labelsmith and Repacorp grow their operations and be more profitable with both digital and flexographic systems.

Still, both Smith and Heinl are quick to point out their digital presses are in no way replacements for their flexographic systems. While their digital machines took some work off the flexo presses, it was limited to those jobs that benefited from the quick makeready, fast turnaround, and short run capabilities of the Xeikon or Jetrion machines. Both converters have found that a significant value-add is how the digital devices free up the flexo presses to run longer jobs. This lets these converters optimize operations and even enjoy the luxury of having the flexibility to print a job on either press.

"We do from 500 to 1,000 jobs a week," explains Smith. "Having digital for the short run jobs frees up our flexo presses to do some big runs we couldn't do before, runs in the one to two million range. Another group of jobs each week are anywhere in the 50,000 to one million range. The Xeikon handles the shorter jobs of various lengths that have multiple changes for color, copy and SKU, as well as the small 1,000 to 5,000 label orders."

Yet total run length is only part of the equation, because with optimization comes efficiency, regardless of which press is used. "If a job is around 20,000 feet and doesn't have many SKUs we'll still run it on flexo," says Heinl. "But on the other hand, the same length job or even a much longer one with a lot of SKUs would go on the Jetrion."

While there are some jobs that demand some additional color combinations or superior quality that a flexo press can deliver, both Heinl and Smith say quality is generally not an issue and that customers often don't notice a difference between flexo and digital presses.

"There are some complex labels that can be very critical and have to be dead on," says Heinl. "We even provide densitometer readings to assure the customer that the color is correct. But much of the time there is not much difference between digital and flexo. Still, we always check and pass a sample to the customer."

Looking forward

While neither Heinl nor Smith see their digital presses as replacements for their flexo machines, they know developing technologies have a way of changing the way things work. While most toner and inkjet presses available today have top speeds in the 60 to 80 feet per minute range, much faster speeds—especially on inkjet systems—are likely to reach the market before long.

"Equipment vendors are developing machines that will run from 160 to 250 feet per minute, which will make them very competitive with flexo," says Heinl. "Machines like that will be game changers for label printing, and digital will become much more commonplace."

The sweet spot for digital is still in the label segment of packaging. For now, moderate-speed digital presses will continue serving as short-run alternatives to flexography, empowering those machines to operate at optimal speeds and throughput. When the performance of both systems is optimized, their coexistence in a converting plant can bring greater profitability to the bottom line. pP