PALO ALTO, Calif., October 26, 2005-HP today announced that Fernqvist Labeling Solutions, a national flexo label manufacturer and equipment provider, has acquired an HP Indigo press ws4050 as part of its strategy to target the nutraceutical, health & beauty aids, and wine industries. Installed at the company's Mountain View, CA, facility, the powerful all-digital workflow of the HP Indigo press ws4050 allows Fernqvist to produce on demand, ready-to-apply labels in up to seven colors while enabling the firm to expand into other profitable arenas, including health & beauty packaging. "That's really the whole strategy behind why we got the Indigo press," said Per Fernqvist, the company's president and co-owner. "We feel we were ahead of the curve of digital printing and can use that digital draw to expand our business. Digital printing fills the gap for on-demand production in flexible quantities and lets us reach a broader range of companies - and it's all about getting new customers." Running with fully compatible die-cut finishing equipment from Rotoflex, Fernqvist's HP Indigo press ws4050 is producing high quality color labels that feature serial numbers and other variable data for a variety of customer applications. These include the company's first official digital wine label job - a thousand each of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir labels recently completed for a small California winery - as well as a run of a thousand units for OptiSource International, the international optical supply firm. "The HP Indigo press ws4050 is a complete end-to-end label printing solution that helps converters take immediate advantage of new business opportunities, easily handling fast turnarounds of complex numbered or bar-code jobs," said Alon Bar-Shany, vice president and general manager, Indigo division, HP. "With the HP Indigo press 4050, jobs that were never practical are now both possible and profitable." The combination of substrate versatility and accurate color matching enables the HP Indigo press ws4050 to complement Fernqvist's traditional flexo and thermal transfer operations. As a result, digital printing is a production option as well as a means of meeting specific requirements. It is also allowing the company to broaden its sales horizons, leading to first-time attendance at the HBA Health & Beauty show in New York City. Designed for maximum productivity and cost-efficiency, the HP Indigo press ws4050 prints full-color variable labels on demand and has an enhanced substrate capacity suitable for a wide array of applications, from self-adhesive labels to shrink sleeves and flexible packaging. High quality print, fast turnaround times and the ability to match consistently up to 97% of the PANTONE Color range make the press ideal to lead Fernqvist's expansion into the other profitable segments of the healthcare and beauty markets. The press supports variable data and security printing capabilities that add value to jobs while contributing to product integrity. Other value-adding features include a reinsertion capability that enables duplex imaging for two-sided prime labels, as well as a validation program for the production of FDA-compliant pharmaceutical labels. Founded in 1989, Fernqvist has printing and prepress facilities in California and New York, providing labeling and bar coding solutions for clients ranging from Ghirardelli Chocolate and Hitachi Automotive to Stanford University Hospital, Genentech, Volvo, and the University of Notre Dame. The company also has a sales office in Elgin, IL. Nearly half the company's business is generated by the food and beverage industry, while the rest comes from a broad spectrum of manufacturing sectors.