Watershed installs HP's 3,000th digital label press

Watershed Group has installed an HP Indigo 6K+ digital press at its Dublin facility, marking HP's milestone of 3,000 digital labels and packaging presses active worldwide.

With a 30-year heritage, Watershed operates five production sites across Ireland, Germany, and Poland. The company is a key print partner to the international food, wine, spirits, pharmaceutical, and industrial sectors, with a hybrid production ecosystem and capabilities in sleeves and flexible packaging.

The installation of the latest HP Indigo 6K+ digital press expands Watershed’s existing HP Indigo fleet, which features the HP Indigo 6900 Digital Press and three HP Indigo 6K presses. The strategic investment was driven by increasing demand for high-quality, short-run jobs with faster lead times and higher operational resilience.

‘We’re proud to be a beta site for the HP Indigo 6K+ and HP Indigo’s 3,000th digital press for labels and packaging worldwide,’ said Kirwan Waters, director of Watershed. ‘Investing in the HP Indigo 6K+ was a natural step for us as our demand for digital printing continues to grow. The press has strengthened our lead times, improved on-time delivery, and given us the flexibility to shift shorter runs to digital, freeing up capacity across the business. For our customers, that means better service, faster turnaround, and consistently high quality.’

As a traditionally analogue converter, Watershed faced increased pressure from shorter-run jobs that consumed excessive flexo set-up time and press hours. The addition of the HP Indigo 6K+ Digital Press, alongside its broader HP Indigo fleet, has transformed this dynamic, shifting short-run and complex work to digital, tripling uptime, and freeing flexo capacity for longer, more efficient runs. The HP Indigo 6K+ Digital Press delivers faster turnaround, superior quality, and reduced waste, driving clear gains across make-ready efficiency, lead times, and overall press utilization.

Watershed Group’s focus is on streamlining efficiencies and accelerating growth through automating processes such as job planning and job allocation is driven by key operational benchmarks. The company uses HP PrintOS to support post-production and optimize efficiencies, assessing operator performance, press uptime and utilization data. The team leverages the software to benchmark new operators, identify workflow bottlenecks, and drive continuous improvement through real-time press metrics.

Workforce development is also a key pillar of Watershed’s digital investment strategy. Compared to traditional flexographic systems, the HP Indigo platform enables significantly faster onboarding and training cycles. New operators can be effectively trained within 6 to 12 weeks, a fraction of the time typically required for flexo. Furthermore, operator productivity on HP Indigo digital presses reaches competitive levels far earlier in the learning curve. By pairing new hires with experienced team members, Watershed has been able to maintain high operational standards while scaling talent in a competitive labor environment. This accelerated onboarding has been crucial to maintaining quality, consistency, and agility across a rapidly growing digital production environment.

Watershed’s investment in the HP Indigo 6K+ Digital Press also directly supports its broader business strategy, focused on driving growth through more complex, high-value label applications and a strong commitment to sustainability. As customer demand increases for multi-SKU, premium packaging with faster turnarounds and lower environmental impact, digital production is uniquely positioned to deliver. The agility and waste reduction of the 6K+ help Watershed align with its five strategic growth pillars, which include expanding into advanced label formats, reducing environmental footprint, and optimizing production efficiency at scale.

‘Watershed has continuously pushed forward while staying true to its values of quality and service, and I’m thrilled that HP Indigo 6K+ underpins these goals and supports Watershed to grow its business,’ said Noam Zilbershtain, vice president and general manager of HP Indigo. ‘This 3,000th press milestone underscores the global momentum for digital transformation and validates our shared vision of helping customers build smarter, more sustainable operations.’

Watershed’s investment in the HP Indigo 6K+ is part of a broader roadmap focused on deeper automation, sustainable operations, and expansion into new market segments. While already producing a limited volume today, Watershed sees short-run digital pouch and flexible applications as a promising growth frontier for its digital business and a potential next step in the company’s transformation journey, for which the company is actively exploring new presses and technologies.