Shelf Space: Familiar Needs in a Foreign Land

It's always good to go places and see and hear new things.

In May it was Belgium for Xeikon Café, a packaging-focused open house at Xeikon's headquarters in the Antwerp suburb of Lier. More than 200 customers and prospects were on hand, along with representatives of 28 companies that partner with Xeikon in developing and delivering solutions for labels and folding cartons.

The Café was intended to be a learning experience and provide pitch-free info on new products, mixed with some good food and an occasional Belgian beer. And it was. There was a steady stream of short tutorials and case studies by partners, opportunities to see a variety of packaging jobs running on Xeikon presses and plenty of one-on-one time to better understand how equipment and software from the various partners fits into the workflows of package printers and converters. Whether the need was for software, dies, pressure sensitive labels, folding cartons, in-mold labels, films or other substrates, there were examples to see, touch and ask about. And every application drew a crowd.

Always curious to see how things are done, I took the opportunity to spend an afternoon visiting W&R Etiketten in Tilburg, Netherlands where I met with Jack Willemsz, whose successful label printing operation looks and feels a lot like many in the U.S. The business opened its doors in 1992 and has grown steadily, now employing some 50 people and doing a bit north of $12 million in total revenue. I'd met Jack at drupa in 2012 and it was great to see his company first hand. The company runs five MPS flexo presses and has two Xeikon 3000 series machines to handle the short-run jobs, which are a growing part of W&R Etiketten's business. (etiketten, by the way, means "labels" in Dutch). Xeikon had asked Willemsz to talk with two Portuguese gentlemen who were planning to add label printing to their commercial print operation and saw digital technology as an entrée to the process. I got to tag along, hang out, and talk with the business owners.

Willemsz says he needs his digital presses for reasons familiar to package printers in the U.S: short runs due to SKU proliferation, regular design changes, multiple promotions, and the short lifetime of some products. For W&R, digital offers stable speed, short set-up times, faster turnarounds, good opaque white, use of food-contact-grade toner, less waste, and environmentally friendly characteristics—the latter an important factor in Europe. Jobs typically arrive electronically and workflow software automatically routes jobs to the most appropriate press based on a series of job parameters. Then the substrate is loaded and the job is run, typically about 5,000 to 6,500 feet. The quality is perfectly acceptable for Willemsz's customers.

"We focus on solving customers' problems," says Willemesz. "it is better to charge less for lots of short runs, than to charge more for the advantage of being able to do a short run. Digital helps us do that."

It was great to see a European operation, and it was clear that the needs of package printers and converters really are a lot alike, no matter where you go.