The seamless integration between a BOBST digital label press and LabelHub’s prepress workflow software has maximized efficiency for ScanLabel A/S in Denmark. Thanks to the open architecture concept, the company has created a completely digitalized workflow, speeding up job turnaround times and increasing profitability.

Established in Horsens in 1994 by Claus Bach, ScanLabel A/S set out with the ambition of becoming the premier label provider in Denmark. Today, the leading printing company posts an annual turnover exceeding € 3 million, serving a large clientele that extends beyond the Danish borders. Operating from a 3500-sqm modern facility, it has an impressive fleet of printing machines, utilizing both flexo and digital technologies, including a high productivity pure digital inkjet label press, from BOBST. 

ScanLabel’s expertise encompasses not only all aspects of label manufacturing – from prepress to final delivery – but also design, planning and strategy as a full consulting partner. Customers of all sizes come from a wide range of industries, such as food and beverage, fisheries, transport, electronics, and many other industrial markets. A significant proportion buy their labels through the company’s online portal Etiketlageret.dk, a growing trend compounded by recent world events. Theis Bach Carlsen, who took over as COO in 2023, explained, “The market has experienced significant volatility in the past few years, since the onset of the corona pandemic, really. As a result, we’ve seen a lot of success with our e-commerce business, whereas the rest of the demand has lagged a bit. Added to that, we have the paper supply crisis, which continues to disrupt the industry, but I remain optimistic that it will stabilize again soon.”

One complete digitalized workflow
To mitigate this volatility, the Danish converter leverages the agility and flexibility offered by BOBST’s prepress solutions to sustain profitability. The BOBST’s open architecture approach has enabled ScanLabel to implement a seamless integration with LabelHub cloud-based prepress software, allowing the label printing company to transition to a completely digitalized workflow.

Established to handle large volumes of orders, ensure quick turnaround times for customers, and increase productivity, the workflow feeds into the existing ERP system which collects all the production data. This paves the way for a future of full connectivity within the entire production floor and also outside services, as well as enabling already at present better process optimization. The benefits of the complete digitalization even extend to the customers, allowing them to place new or repeated orders in the system, review existing artwork and approve jobs for printing.

As a strategic plan to induce growth, the investment has been a great success, taking productivity at ScanLabel to a considerably higher level. “Our capabilities have effectively doubled since we installed the new BOBST label press, supporting our growth tremendously,” said Theis Bach. “In addition, the open system architecture has empowered us to digitalize the entire workflow, which has been integrated at a later phase with our partner LabelHub. This simplification of our working process naturally offers huge benefits for us as a small team, because we only need to input the job data once. Moreover, it allows us to fully implement the easy-to-use BOBST Digital Front End.”

Reducing human errors with automation
The investment with BOBST has also helped the ScanLabel team address the growing challenge of finding experienced press operators to run their machines. With fewer and fewer young people making label printing their chosen profession each year, this is a problem that will become even more pronounced in the years to come.

Designed with high levels of automation, BOBST digital presses are very easy to operate, removing the need for finding staff with specialized printing skills. The setup process is fast and simple, executed through an intuitive HMI module that governs all aspects of the process, so anyone proficient in using a computer can operate the press.

The close integration ScanLabel has implemented with LabelHub further ensures that fewer mistakes make it into the press room. “Every time you have people involved, there is a risk of errors being introduced, so it’s really a game changer for our company to automate the workflow, because everyone’s forced to work in the most optimal way. This initiative is certainly saving us significant amounts of time. I anticipate that by the end of the year, faults caused by human error will be down to less than 1%, which adds to our profitability, as well as saving loads of waste.”

BOBST Inkjet Technology is the future
ScanLabel recognizes the growing trend in the market towards inkjet technology and acknowledges its significance for the future. The positive experience the company has had integrating the BOBST pure digital inkjet press into a complete digital workflow means that Theis Bach is now considering its future investment path with BOBST. “Label printing revolves more and more around digital. In the last couple of years, we have seen great improvements in the technology, so this is where we are directing our efforts,” he said, concluding, “Our plan is to make an upgrade with BOBST, heading towards the DIGITAL MASTER platform, which is perfect for our set up thanks to the lamination and die-cutting in one pass. That will be the next big investment for our company.”

Discover more about the advantages of BOBST Inkjet Technology here.