Etiketten Carini installs HP Indigo WS6600

Leading Austrian converter Etiketten Carini has installed an HP Indigo WS6600 digital press, its third WS6000-series press.

Carini has a long history of digital printing, installing an Indigo Omnius back in 1998, followed in 2005 by an HP Indigo WS4050 and a WS4500. In 2009, the company replaced the WS4000-series presses with two HP Indigo WS6000 digital presses.  All Carini’s HP Indigo digital presses were supplied by HP preferred partner Chromos AG, of Dielsdorf, Switzerland.

‘Even though we doubled our digital capacity with the WS6000 digital presses, we needed more,’ said Edgar Sohm, managing director, Etiketten Carini. ‘We’ve seen digital print runs getting longer, and there are more jobs, too; the WS6600 press will enable us to meet these new demands.’

Carini’s digital presses account for 24 per cent of jobs, with the remainder generated by the company’s eight conventional presses. Two near-line finishing machines from HP finishing partner AB Graphic International handle the output from the three HP Indigo presses.

‘We print to a high-quality on a wide variety of substrates,’ Edgar Sohm continued. ‘Coated and uncoated papers, films, transparent stock, mono-films and more recently metallic and silver films are among the stocks we regularly print. In a supermarket, all the jobs – conventional and digital – are on the shelf next to each other and it’s important that the customer notices no difference between them. With our HP Indigo presses, we are able to achieve this.’

Sohm notes the difficulty in defining an ‘average’ digital run length. ‘We are seeing increasing variations in what would have been long runs in the past. It is possible to have a job of 50,000 meters that comprises 200 variations to accommodate different scents, flavours, languages and so on.’

Jobs that the company used to print as a long run once a year are now shorter runs produced several times a year. Handling more jobs – but not necessarily more labels – can create challenges for a company.

‘The expense for data-handling, clearance, customer care and such is the same whether the job is worth 300 euros or 5000 euros,’ said Sohm. ‘The administrative costs and the speed are crucial because the customer wants the delivery very fast.’

Carini has a highly automated workflow. The HP SmartStream Labels and Packaging Print Server Powered by Esko plays an important role linking prepress with the presses and integrating with the overall management information system.

‘The kaizen philosophy of continuous change and improvement is an important part of our attitude,’ says Edgar Sohm. ‘We ask ourselves all the time, How can we make this better/faster/smoother?’

Etiketten Carini has 130 employees and an annual turnover of 19.5 million euros.

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