Time for the Payoff

ELISHA TROPPER, PRESIDENT of Prestige Label Co., Inc., must have been real busy over the last three years. Under his direction, the company's plant in Burgaw, N.C. has been completely retooled—from front to back. The three-year, $3 million capital program had three key objectives: upgrade capabilities, infrastructure, and capacity.

When the Tropper-family-owned Central Financial Group purchased the company, the plant consisted of six flexo presses and two slitter/rewinders. In addition, the plant produced flexo plates using a 25-year-old DuPont platemaking technology that consisted of step-and-repeat machines with cameras and films developed in pans.

Tropper and VP of Plant Operations Tim Keegan planned and implemented the overhaul around a new management operating system, purchasing Label Traxx™ job management software developed by Tailored Solutions. This system offers software modules from order processing, invoicing, and general ledger to inventory and quality control.

The company sold five of the existing presses, retaining only a 10" Mark Andy 4120 press, which it upgraded from six to nine colors. This press was joined by two new 13.75" UV flexo combination Nilpeter Rotopresses with 10-color capabilities, and enhanced with Stork rotary screens, in-line hot and cold foil stamping, corona treaters, web cleaners, and video inspection. In addition, Prestige acquired an Indigo Webstream Omnius digital press in early 2001 to handle short-run jobs, special niche markets, and variable information printing.

The company's finishing department also got an overhaul. Prestige added a custom Rotoflex finishing unit with UV varnishing, laminating, slitting, rewinding, re-registration, and inspection capabilities. Additional new equipment included two Rotoflex slitter/ rewinders, one PIC rewinder, and a tabletop rewinder from Web Techniques.

To make appropriate use of all the new pressroom and finishing equipment, it was of critical importance to upgrade prepress capabilities as well. Prestige built its digital infrastructure around PCC Artwork Systems' FlexoCal software.

Overseen by Operations Manager Terie Syme, the prepress upgrades culminated in January with the installation of a new computer-to-plate digital workflow via DuPont's FAST thermal processing equipment. This was achieved through the use of Esko-Graphics' digital imaging technology and included an Esko-Graphics DuPont Cyrel Digital Imager Spark unit, DuPont Cyrel FAST 100EC/LF Exposure/Light Finisher unit, DuPont Cyrel FAST 1000 Processor, DuPont Cromalin® iGeneration Digital WaterProof® Printer, and CromaNet™ Color Management Software.

The great majority of these extensive upgrades were completed by the end of last year. With the foundation now in place, Tropper says the remaining work will involve upgrades or enhancements to these core capabilities.

Revamping the operation with state-of-the-art technology has paid off quickly for Tropper as his company has been able to expand into new markets that it couldn't have gotten into previously, such as high-end primary labels and specialty label printing.

According to Tropper, reducing the number of flexo presses from six to three (plus adding the digital press) has enabled Prestige to produce a higher quality product to a broader array of end-use markets and applications. "In addition, we found that our capacity actually increased due to the higher run speeds and quicker changeover and setup times," he states. "In fact, we expect the addition of FAST to add somewhere between 500 and 700 additional hours to our annual capacity."

by Tom Polischuk, Editor-in-Chief