Marsh Labels switches to PACKZ developed by Hybrid Software

‘We run two HP Indigo, 6900 and 6800 plus four ABG Digicon presses and a new peel and reveal machine,’ said Gary Burnley, joint managing director at Marsh Labels. ‘We take in lots of short runs and provide the repro to put the files together. In the past a small run of 500 to 1,000 labels has taken longer to repro than to print. PACKZ has improved turnaround time significantly so that we have more capacity to take on more work. It’s giving us the confidence to branch out into another line of work.’

Marsh Labels produce approximately 20,000 jobs each year, providing digital capacity for other print shops around the UK, by supplying labels for most industry sectors including beverage, pharmaceuticals, retail, cosmetic, healthcare, food, beverage and security.

‘PACKZ is head and shoulders over any other software I have used for the last 20 years I have been in the business,‘ added Leigh Howe, pre-press manager at Marsh Labels. ‘It has a great feel to it and Hybrid Software is constantly driving it forward. They listen to customers like us who have got a few ideas and the next thing you know; you see an update with that feature in it. It’s a native PDF so the job stays in PDF through pre-press so there are no conversions that can slow things down and clutter up the file server.’

According to Howe, the number of variable data (VDP) jobs has doubled over the past year:  ‘It’s mostly barcodes and numbering but because the VDP module is inside PACKZ the pre-press department can work on a customer supplied PDF file from start to finish, cutting out unnecessary steps such as importing the file into another application and then exporting the file again,’ he added.

‘It’s very efficient. I’m much more confident that what I see on the proof is correct than I ever was before because PACKZ reduces the risk of human error: dimensions of crop boxes are computer generated rather than drawn manually; editing and sharing the color books is simple and no longer a manual process and there’s bar code recognition that is computer generated from the incoming file. All these features take seconds off each part of the checking process. Multiply that up and already the number of jobs we process per day has gone up and the only thing we have changed is to move to PACKZ,’ concluded Howe.

PACKZ captures all elements of a job in a single PDF file.  It contains all the features required for labels and packaging production such as trapping, full transparency support, color separation mapping, Live Objects for variable content, barcode pre-flight and creation, tabular step & repeat, and structured assets including fonts, images, separations, object-based screening settings, barcodes, and other PDF objects.