Rako Etiketten buys five HP Indigo WS6600 presses

Rako Etiketten buys five HP Indigo WS6600 presses

Rako Etiketten has purchased five new HP Indigo WS6600 digital presses. The company is installing the new machines across three facilities in Germany to upgrade its current digital printing capabilities.

With headquarters in Witzhave, near Hamburg, Germany, Rako Etiketten is a leading supplier of labels and packaging and Europe's largest producer of printed labels using digital offset reel-to-reel technology.

The HP Indigo WS6600 features the ILP (In-Line Priming) option, a custom-developed water-based primer that supports standard, untreated paper substrates. The ILP helps ensure faster turnaround times by eliminating the extra step of off-line substrate preparation, while also increasing flexibility and lowering costs.

‘The new HP Indigo WS6600 presses are twice as fast as our existing installed models and easier to use. We can reduce our labor costs per label enormously while doubling our capacity,’ said Roger Gehrke, manager of digital printing, Rako Etiketten. ‘The new ability to use standard media as we do in our conventional offset and flexo printing presses is also a huge advantage, reducing inventory costs and overall material costs too.’

According to Rako Etiketten, the new Enhanced Productivity Mode (EPM) functionality of the HP Indigo WS6600 helps achieve higher productivity for faster turnaround time on print jobs. EPM increases press throughput by 33 percent for most color jobs and by 25 percent when adding white ink.

‘Using EPM – replacing black ink by simulating it with cyan, magenta and yellow – we will be able to print an extra 10 linear meters per minute,’ explained Gehrke.

With a printing speed of up to 60 meters per minute and the new EPM, the HP Indigo WS6600 digital press significantly extends the crossover point of digital versus conventional processes, enabling print service providers to increase flexibility, efficiency and profitability.

‘Short runs are like a mantra that almost everyone follows today, and they have become root and branch of our whole operation. We are also seeing more and more variable data printing, especially in the pharmaceuticals industry with unique barcodes and data matrix codes identifying contents and source. It is absolutely essential that we can react in the shortest possible timeframe,’ said Gehrke. ‘The speed and easy operation of the new presses give us the agility we need to keep meeting our customers' changing demands.’

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