PrintCo360 adds Mark Andy Digital Series iQ

When PrintCo360 began evaluating its next digital press, founder and owner Joey Hicks kept returning to a practical question: Why take a production process that had long worked in one pass on flexo and divide it among several pieces of equipment?

The Rainsville, Alabama, converter came close to purchasing a standalone digital press. But the more Hicks considered the steps required to move printed rolls through separate die-cutting and slitting operations, the less sense the arrangement made. PrintCo360 ultimately chose a Mark Andy Digital Series iQ, a UV inkjet hybrid platform that keeps printing and converting in-line, consistent with the one-pass production model the company had long relied on in flexo.

Founded in 2012, PrintCo360 represents three generations of printing and packaging experience. Hicks’ father spent his career in flexography, with a deep background in wide-web bags, pouches and other flexible packaging applications. He helped Joey establish PrintCo360 and move into narrow-web label production.

Today, several of Hicks’ children work in the company, including his oldest son, Silas, who began on a slitting system, became a press operator and now oversees production, quoting, scheduling,and coordination with the sales team. The company describes its culture as a 'functional family', where employees step in to help one another and solve production problems collaboratively.

For Hicks, family ownership influences the responsibility people bring to the work.

'There’s more caring involved because my kids realize that this is part of their future, too,' he said. 'They’re directly affected by everything we put out the door. Their life is tied to our success, and that creates a different level of accountability. They take pride in the work because they know our name is on it, and they understand that every decision we make today shapes what comes next for them and for the business.'

PrintCo360 operates four presses, all from Mark Andy, and began adding digital production around a decade ago. The move toward digital production was driven by a recognition of shifting label demand and the need to stay aligned with evolving market expectations.

That assessment has proven accurate. Hicks is seeing average runs become smaller while the number of SKUs continues to grow. Food and beverage is currently one of PrintCo360’s strongest areas of expansion, including work for craft beer, spices and other consumer products where brands frequently introduce new varieties and designs.

Although the company is rooted in northeastern Alabama, its customer base is far from exclusively regional. PrintCo360 ships throughout the US and into Canada, with Hicks estimating that approximately 40 percent of its work is produced for customers outside its immediate market.

The Digital Series iQ is configured with two flexo stations, one before and one after the digital engine, along with in-line die-cutting. That gives PrintCo360 the ability to combine digital printing with flexographic coatings, spot colors and other requirements without moving the roll to another press.

'We went to see roll-to-roll digital standalone machines, and I kept thinking, "This doesn’t make sense to me,"' Hicks stated. 'You’re asking for a bottleneck when you have to print it, move it to a die cutter and then move it somewhere else to slit it. We had been printing and converting in-line on flexo presses for years. Why would we stop doing that when we went digital?'

The press has become a platform for the company's expanding multi-SKU label work. Instead of stopping repeatedly to change plates, inks, anilox rolls and ink pans, PrintCo360 can prepare multiple versions in prepress and run them consecutively while the press continues operating.

'The quality coming off the press is number one,' Hicks said. 'It's in register, and we’re not spending time playing around with inks. If a customer has a couple thousand labels across ten different SKUs, we can set them all up in prepress and run them through. The press never stops. In flexo, that would have taken hours upon hours.'

Hicks expects PrintCo360’s next major press investment to remain on the digital side of the business. He sees stronger margins in digitally produced prime labels and values the ability to deliver high-impact graphics efficiently across a wide range of order sizes.

The company’s longer-term goal is ambitious: to add approximately one new press each year while continuing to evaluate where its customer mix and most profitable opportunities are moving. 'We want to continue growing, stay on the forefront of the technology that is coming out and remain extremely competitive,' Hicks stated.

With the Digital Series iQ now contributing capacity across food, beverage, craft beer, spices and other applications, PrintCo360 has taken another step in that direction. The investment combines the production logic the company trusts from flexography with the versioning, consistency and efficiency of digital printing, giving this family-owned converter a practical platform for its next stage of growth.​​​​​​