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.

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," Rotolabel was immediately approached to produce the labels. Cape Town-based Rotolabel is one of South Africa's leading producers of self-adhesive labels and a long-time supplier to Woolworths.

"Our company specializes in high-quality label printing and has a reputation for providing a dedicated, reliable service to its customers," said Grant Watson, sales director, Rotolabel. "To provide this high-end service, we have a number of letterpress machines and an HP Indigo press ws4500 at our disposal.

"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. The increased quality of our digitally printed labels won us many new customers requiring packaging for premium products, and our HP Indigo press continues to enhance our offering as a supplier of high-quality print services."

According to Steve Andrews, packaging, design and planning manager, Woolworths, Rotolabel's reputation and digital capabilities made the company a natural choice.

"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," said Andrews. "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
The "Cooks' Essentials" product range 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. 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," explained Andrews. "Rotolabel conducted numerous tests to ensure the required result was achieved."

The HP Indigo press ws4500 uses HP ElectroInk liquid ink technology and a wide color gamut to provide exceptional and consistent print quality. Spot colors can also be printed on the HP Indigo press ws4500 to ensure that customers' brand colors are matched and the end-result meets the requirements exactly.

"The challenge was to keep the metallic effect consistent across the range of different product labels," explained 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."

Cost-effective short runs and fast turnaround
The HP Indigo press ws4500 is able deliver fast turnarounds on print runs as few as one to 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," said Rotolabel's Watson. "This added-value has helped Rotolabel stay ahead of the competition with unrivalled customer service."

Rotolabel's HP Indigo operation also allows the firm to stay ahead of deadlines. "Rotolabel is absolutely committed to honoring the agreed turnaround time when we request a new job," said Nicki Russell, product developer – groceries, Woolworths. "Often they will even go as far as providing the finished labels a week prior to the deadline, but the quality of the end-product will always remain consistently high. They are by far the most professional printers I have worked with."

Launching a successful product range
The "Cooks' Essentials" product range proved to be a great success following its 2008 launch. "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," said 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."

Two years since the product line launch Rotolabel still produces the labels for the "Cooks' Essentials" product line using HP Indigo technology.

"The results we were able to deliver for Woolworths would not have been possible without our HP Indigo press," said Watson. "We consider HP to be the leader in digital print technology and continue to rely upon their printing solutions to enhance our business offering and provide our customers with outstanding print quality."