US converter Copac installs HP Indigo WS6600 digital press

Copac Global Packaging, a label and carton packaging converter based in South Carolina, USA, has installed a new HP Indigo WS6600 digital press.

The company had already been operating a fleet of offset, flexographic, letterpress and HP Indigo digital presses to produce labels and carton packaging. By using the speed and quality of the new HP Indigo WS6600 digital press as a complement to its conventional printing systems, Copac can produce offset-quality strategic/short runs to offer its customers innovative label and folding carton products.

One of Copac's regular label and folding carton clients is The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery (OMB), a North Carolina-based microbrewery modeled after German-style neighborhood brewpubs. OMB has positioned itself as a fresh beer brewer, which means that every part of the operation, from bottling to packaging and shipment, is time sensitive.

So when OMB needed labels for its seasonal Yule Bock and folding cartons for a specialty holiday three-pack, Copac had to work quickly. Powered by its HP Indigo WS6600 digital press, Copac delivered a few hundred cartons on both SBS board and premium silver foil board. From concept to delivery, the job took about a week.

With full color printing speeds of 130 feet (39.6 meters) per minute, the HP Indigo WS6600 digital press is more than twice as productive as Copac's old digital press. An Inline Priming unit allowed Copac to print on silver foil board without sending the material to an outside coater. By coating the substrate and then feeding it directly into the press, the Inline Priming unit not only saved Copac three to four days, but also helped lower the company's carbon footprint by eliminating the need to ship the material an extra two times.

‘One of the beauties about HP Indigo digital technology is it's very flexible. This project would have been virtually impossible without inline priming,’ said Tom McRae, vice president of sales and marketing at Copac.

Copac also produces folding cartons for a number of tobacco companies, which are required to submit finished sales samples to the government for approval. With the HP Indigo WS6600 digital press, Copac can offer finished product samples in about a week for a fraction of the cost of offset.

‘HP Indigo's color matching system is so good, we have no problem printing a few thousand cartons and saying, “This is what it's going to look like”, knowing that in the end we're going to print a million cartons using offset,’ said McRae.

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