Digital Domain September 2010
Rotolabel Creates Premium Packaging With Digital Press
PALO ALTO, Calif.—South African converter Rotolabel is using its HP Indigo press ws4500 to deliver high-quality print across a range of products for the local retail brand Woolworths of Cape Town.
"We purchased the HP Indigo press about four years ago, and Woolworths was just one of the food and wine retailers that were attracted to our new print capabilities," says Grant Watson, sales director, Rotolabel. "The increased quality of our digitally printed labels won us many new customers who required packaging for premium products, and our HP Indigo press continues to enhance our offering as a supplier of high-quality print services."
"We needed a trustworthy print service provider that would be able to take the concept for the new product labels from final artwork stage to the finished product," says Steve Andrews, packaging, design, and planning manager for Woolworths. "Having worked with Rotolabel before, we knew that they would be ideally suited for this job and having HP Indigo print capabilities made the decision to place the work with them even easier."
Maintaining consistent, high-quality printing
When Woolworths, which is a major retail brand in the Republic of South Africa, launched a range of cooking oils, dessert sauces, syrups, and glazes as part of a premium product line called "Cooks' Essentials," it immediately approached Rotolabel to produce the labels.
"Our company specializes in high-quality label printing and has a reputation for providing a dedicated, reliable service to its customers," says Watson. "To provide this high-end service, we have a number of letterpress machines and an HP Indigo press ws4500 at our disposal."
"Cooks' Essentials" is aimed at experienced cooks and cooking enthusiasts. The packaging design and finished quality of the product needed to attract this semi-professional market with a high-end look and feel.
"To achieve this premium look, one of the features of the new label design was a metallic effect at the bottom of all the labels," explains Andrews. "Critical to the appearance of the label and ultimately, the success of the new range, this effect needed to be fresh, clean, balanced, and bright. Rotolabel conducted numerous tests to ensure the required result was achieved."
"The challenge was to keep the metallic effect consistent across the range of different product labels," explains Nigel Deary, creative and prepress director for Woolworth's design and prepress agency, Calibre Brand Solutions. "We printed the first run on both the letterpress machines and the HP Indigo press ws4500. When we compared the results, the texture in the background differed from one level to the next on the labels printed on the letterpress, but with the digital press, we found we had much better control. It was also easier to use the HP Indigo press ws4500 within our workflow as it was really quick to set up and we were guaranteed the same high-quality every time we printed something."
Successful product launch
The HP Indigo press ws4500 can deliver fast turnarounds on print runs as few as one and as many as 50,000 labels, which helps Rotolabel's customers to get their products to market quickly.
"The cost-effective, short-run capability of the HP Indigo ws4500 means that we can print what our customers want, when they want it, and also, we can provide them with proofs that will be identical to the real job and conduct trials prior to production—such as the trials we did for Woolworths," says Watson. "This added-value has helped Rotolabel stay ahead of the competition with unrivalled customer service."
The "Cooks' Essentials" product range proved to be a great success for the company following its launch in 2008. "Woolworths found that the range was extremely popular with its customers and I believe the packaging design played an important role in the products' success," says a second –Woolworths grocery product developer, –Catherine Bothner. "The design clearly pulled the range of diverse products together and created a clear sub-brand on the shelves. The quality of the packaging and the overall appearance of the new products made them stand out as a high-end range and attracted the target audience instantly."
Second Digital Label Summit
The second Digital Label Summit was held in at the Hotel Rey Juan Carlos I in Barcelona. Attracting 213 delegates from all over Europe and beyond, the expanded summit included presentations from a cross-section of international experts about the latest developments in digital package and label printing.
The summit this year had an increased focus on the direction that digital solutions and applications will take in the future. With new generations of fully-integrated digital presses and high added-value conventional/digital in-line combination presses evolving, as well as an explosion in inkjet technology, the interest regarding these latest advances in the label and packaging sectors is growing considerably. The summit reviewed the latest developments and applications in integrated, in-line, and stand-alone toner and UV-curable inkjet presses for self-adhesive, shrink sleeve, and heat transfer labels, flexible packaging, cartons, pouches, and tubes.
The conference played host to industry experts speaking, putting forward case studies, and sitting on panels to explore new technologies and applications for digital printing of labels, tickets/tags, and flexible packaging. Brand owners also talked about their experiences with digitally printed labels and packs and their expectations for the future developments.
Conference highlights included:
• Digital web-fed printing–State-of-the-art: Michael Fairley summarized the best tips and analysis for digital technologies, solutions, and markets and applications. Along with Bob Leahey of InfoTrends Inc., Fairley gave the audience information on how to implement the new technologies available.
• Advances in digital print technologies and solutions: This session looked at performance—resolution, web widths, colors, speed, environmental issues; combining materials, inks and technology for optimum inkjet performance; and developing new markets and applications.
• Consumables that influence quality and performance: Kenneth D. Stack, EFI/Jetrion; Christian Menegon, HP Indigo; Lode Deprez, Xeikon; and Adrian Lockwood looked at the nature and performance of digital inks, toners, and drying/curing systems and the use of coatings and varnishes, taking the environment into consideration. pP
