Labels of some sort have adorned bottles, boxes, and bags for hundreds of years. The turn of the seventeenth century saw the first "modern" packaging. Hand-blown bottles were wrapped in paper made sheet-by-sheet and printed on a hand press.
Even then the label, which could be a detailed and wordy broadside or a simple informational wrapper, was the "voice" of a package.
Visit the retail store of your choice and imagine a shelf full of plain cans full of fruits and vegetables, row after row of simple glass jars, and wine and liquor in anonymous bottles. All of these, even in shapes as recognizable as the Absolute vodka bottle, have no way to truly communicate with a buyer without a label.
Some may consider the label as just a pretty face on a hardworking package while others may say that the label does the heavy lifting when it comes to getting the consumer to buy. From either point of view, the label is here to stay.
Labels, whether printed directly on the container or affixed to it, are ubiquitous. Not only are labels everywhere, they are one of the major categories of print that will not easily be replaced by an electronic alternative.
Surrounded by major highways and super stores,
Labels West is tucked into a little wooded area, through which a small creek runs. There
John Shanley manages the company that he and his family started in 1978. Employing nearly 50 people and generating sales of more than $9 million, Labels West produces millions of labels every year on six flexographic presses and an HP Indigo 4050.
Digital versus Flexo
Balancing digital and traditional flexo label production has allowed Shanley to focus on quality while delivering print runs that range from a handful of labels to hundreds of thousands. Engineering the right production process to meet the buyer's need for cost, speed, and quality means that Shanley's sales team often prices jobs twice; once on a traditional press and once on the digital press.
When label quality is paramount and when economical short runs are required, the Labels West sales team looks to digital production to eliminate plate costs and reduce make-ready by as much as 90%. A label printed with process color, spot colors, and coatings can require as many as 10 plates; to achieve perfect registry with 10 plates can eat up yards and yards of substrate. Not only does digital printing eliminate the plates, make-ready can be done with as little as 5 feet of material.
Just-in-Time Inventory
We hear over and over again how successfully digital print on demand eliminates waste by delivering only the printed products you need. Package designers are moving to digital printing of labels for the same reasons designers of promotional materials use the process - high quality short runs delivered quickly and for a reasonable price.
Research from companies like
InfoTrends tells us that about 20% of all printed materials are in error or obsolete and must be disposed of. These are the same reasons that cause as much as 30% of labels to be thrown away. Printed materials can often be recycled, however if the labels are affixed to filled container, the disposal is much more expensive.
Consider, for example, a personal care product, pharmaceutical product, or something as mundane as a jar of pickles. It's costly to have 50,000 or 100,000 jars of pickles in inventory and suddenly have to change the information on the jar. It's fairly easy to dispose of 50,000 labels, but not so easy to dispose of 50,000 jars of pickles.
Producing and using short runs on demand eliminates the ancillary cost of product disposal when the information on the label or package is obsolete.
Digital Sweet Spot
Because the print quality is high and short runs are economical, Labels West has uncovered two retail product niches where it is extremely successful: "nutraseuticals" (food-based dietary supplements) and wine. In each case there can be a number of versions of a single brand, each requiring a different kind of label.
For example, Washington has several hundred small boutique wineries that produce fewer than 5000 cases of wine a year. Wineries may have 8 to 10 varieties and limited bottling of special wines; as a result 100,000 labels get divided into a lot of short runs, sometimes just a few hundred items.
"We were already being pressured to do short runs and multiple versions quickly and with high quality requirements," said John. "It got to the point where we really had to do some creative discounting of plates and make-ready to come up with a way to make this work. Moving to digital was a natural for us; we didn't have to look for the business, it came to us."
Obviously it's working; revenues for Labels West have grown 15% to 20% every year for the last three years.
The Good and Bad of Digital Production
Adding digital production to a traditional flexo plant can be expensive. It's not just the cost of the press - which can be substantial - it's the big footprint, the special finishing equipment, and the special climate-controlled room that adds even more to the cost.
Some companies are hesitant to move to digital production when they factor in much slower production speeds than traditional flexo presses.
Regardless of the production speed, there are certain types of labels that must be produced on a flexo press. Until digital presses are reconfigured, you will not be able to use them to laminate multiple layers or bury something under another layer.
However that hasn't stopped Labels West. About 20% of the company's business is digital and Shanley says, "If HP can continue to increase the speed, we may actually be able to replace most traditional label printing with digital."
Sustainability
Whether marketing departments are seeing green packaging as a competitive advantage or consumers want to be more environmentally conscious, designers and buyers are asking a lot of questions, such as:
- "Is there a recycled option for this substrate?"
- "What happens to this label when it goes into the land fill?"
- "Are there materials that we can use that are biodegradable?"
- "What happens when you combine this label with this kind of package?
- How does that affect recyclability?"
Education of both the designer and the consumer is important. For example, PLA or corn-based plastics are now being used for labels. However as soon as you put a corn-based label on a polypropylene plastic bottle, the product will end up in a landfill. Separately, the two plastics can be handled through the waste stream without being disposed of in a landfill; mixing them insures that's where they'll be headed.
Taking the time to teach customers about compatible waste streams, learning more about new production processes, and implementing lean manufacturing are simply the way Labels West does business. John says, "We want to do the right thing and still make a profit. We are conscious of what we do and we continually work to be more efficient and reduce waste."
Some of the initiatives Labels West has put in place are:
- A move to water-based inks, which has eliminated the need to dispose of solvents as toxic waste.
- Implementation of a computer to plate (CTP) system that has not only reduced energy costs but eliminated the use of toxic chemicals such as perchlorethelene and hydrochloric acid.
- With chemistry-free plates even the polymer that is ablated from the plate is returned to the manufacturer for reprocessing.
- A partnership with Puget Sound Energy resulted in credits for replacing lighting; at the same time the utility paid half the cost of a new $20,000 compressor required to run some of the company's equipment.
- Waste containing adhesives is turned over to company that burns the trim waste, converts it into power and "scrubs" the exhaust to eliminate any emissions.
- A 4-day workweek has eliminated one commute day a week.
- The company is now experimenting with biodegradable adhesives.
Labels Have a Bright Future
Some people will tell you that the only environmentally sustainable packaging is no packaging at all. A quick walk through any large retail outlet, supermarket, or drug store highlights the sheer volume of labels and their importance.
The real world demand for the safe and secure delivery of products will continue to require sensitively designed packages, containers, and cartons. At the same time, consumers will demand more information about the source, production, and use of the contents.
Labels inform, educate, motivate, and protect consumers. They won't disappear any time soon.
