Combination Printing Opens New Markets

A state-of-the-art facility and new printing capabilities add up to expanding business opportunities for Star Label Products.

STAR LABEL PRODUCTS, a label printer located in Fairless Hills, Pa., operates with a customer-focused philosophy to provide the highest quality labels at a competitive price with a faster turnaround than its competition. Shev Okumus, president of the 30-year-old company, sums this up in more simple terms: "We bend over backwards for our customers."

With customers covering a range of markets including pharmaceuticals, medical device manufacturers, food, health and beauty, and electronics, customer demands for high-quality, high-end labels and superior service are the rule rather than the exception. Star Label strives to meet these demands by thoroughly learning its customers' businesses and products so that "we can fully understand their application and needs," says Okumus. "We also want to give our customers a service level that will allow them to trust and depend on us for all of their labeling needs."

Humble beginnings

Shev's father, Don, who currently serves as vice president of the company, founded Star Label Products in 1972. Don started his career in printing as a press helper and press operator for two years before starting up the company with one Mark Andy 800 Series press. Shev joined the company full time in 1988, after learning the label printing trade by working summers and after school in the family business.

Today, the company consists of a single, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility with 10 Mark Andy presses. Its 30 employees work on a one-shift basis, with overtime and some Saturday shifts picking up the slack when needed. Shev says proudly that the company has never had a layoff in its 30 years of operation.

The company's capabilities include flexography, UV flexo, UV letterpress, UV rotary screen, and hot foil stamping. These capabilities provide the basis for what he says makes the company distinctive. "We have the capabilities and self containment of a large company, but the personalized service of a small company. This allows us to deliver labels to our customers in 24 to 48 hours on multi-color jobs if needed."

It also supports the company's can-do attitude. They have had instances where a customer has had a blanket order for the production of six months worth of labels, with the release of a certain portion every two weeks. A frantic call from the customer for more labels when Star Label was closed on the weekend or third shift has been met with Star Label opening up its warehouse and delivering product to keep their customer up and running.

It is also not unheard of to get a call early in the morning from a food-industry customer requesting the immediate need of a three- or four-color label job. Star Label has met such requests with a shipment of labels that same afternoon.

New facilities

To maintain its competitive edge for flexibility and fast turnaround, the company committed to a major overhaul of its facilities and moved into a new 35,000 square foot building in August of last year. The previous operation housed eight presses and warehousing in 13,000 square feet. The new building was just a piece of the expansion. The company also installed five new Mark Andy presses and retired three existing presses to bring its total operation to 10 presses.

According to Okumus, the new presses were key additions for fast-turnaround production. "The new presses give us the ability to move jobs from press to press in order to keep up with our customers' demands," he states.

Four of the five new presses have Mark Andy Quick Change Tables that provide increased efficiency on jobs that require multiple plate/color changes. They also allow the operators to set up the next production run while the press is still running its current job.

All of the new presses have video web inspection systems, three from BST Promark and two from PC Industries. These systems allow the press operators to maintain good quality production at faster speeds. Instead of pulling samples, they can expand critical printed areas smaller than a quarter inch onto a 17-inch monitor and, with the strobing effect, observe the still image of the critical location throughout the production run.

Three of the new presses are 10-inches wide, which allows them to get more labels across the web and to be more competitive on longer runs. The old facility had just one 10-inch machine; the rest were 7-inches wide.

Okumus installed one of the new presses in a segregated pharmaceutical printing area that is designed to meet the more stringent demands of this industry. This press includes a Quick Change Table, a double-sided corona treater, web vacuum, and video web inspection, along with finishing equipment to support it.

Combination printing

One of the new presses acquired by Star Label was a Mark Andy 4150 10-inch combination press. It includes 10-color UV flexo, 4-color Stork rotary screen units, and a hot foil stamping unit. "We wanted the ability to print UV flexo, with rotary UV screen units that could be moved to any position on the press," says Okumus. "Combined with hot foil stamping, this allowed us to enter into new markets."

The press also incorporates auto registration, video web inspection, and double-sided corona treating. "All of these capabilities allow us to fit just about any need that our customers may have now or in the future," states Okumus. "We have also been able to get work from other label manufacturers that don't have these capabilities; work that they would have turned down in the past. For example, with our screen units we are able to lay down coatings that require heavy coverage (i.e., glow-in-the-dark coatings). We are even able to print Braille text if needed."

Okumus decided to get Star Label into combination printing because of a need he saw in the small-to-medium size market. "Most of the converters doing multi-color combination printing were large companies targeting large beverage and health and beauty manufacturers," he observed. "We wanted to produce combination labels for the small- to mid-size customer who needed a combination printed primary label, but was too small for the larger label converter that was set up to do long runs for the major companies."

He also points out the difficulty with breaking in as a supplier to larger companies. "When multiple copies are involved there are a lot of up-front costs for screens, hot stamping dies, etc. Once a customer makes this investment, it is very difficult to get their business unless they are having serious problems with their current vendor."

Star Label didn't have many problems starting up this new press, just a normal learning curve for the combination printing aspects. They had to learn which inks worked well together and what types of foil to use for certain materials, or if they were printing on top of the foil.

Okumus does point out that operating costs are higher due to the different processes. This translates to additional set-up time and waste. "But the end result is a beautiful, vibrant label that stands out on the product. You can not achieve the same results with conventional flexo."