Vila boosts sales with digital print

Dutch label specialist Vila Etiketten has achieved an average annual sales growth of 25-30 percent for the fourth year running following its move into digital. Carol Houghton reports

Established in 1992, Vila Etiketten is one of Holland’s fastest growing label producers, with a portfolio of over 2,000 customers including blue-chip brands, retailers and other local printers.

The company originally produced black and white barcodes with a one day delivery time on two thermal transfer machines. Finding it expensive to buy in thermal transfer food labels, the company invested in its first digital press. Managing director Robbert Vugts says: ‘The huge investment was daunting at first and we spent a few years looking for the best solution before deciding on HP Indigo.’ The company invested successively in WS4050 and WS4500 digital presses driven by HP’s SmartStream Labels and Packaging Print Server, powered by EskoArtwork.

Vila Etiketten now produces small quantities of self adhesive labels with the addition of hot foiling in a maximum of five days, following its philosophy to deliver within one week. ‘Hot foil and digital are a good combination,’ said Vugts. ‘Hot foil has a five minute set up time, is very fast and cheap, with minimum waste.’

Extending capabilities

Based in Breda, Vila Etiketten extended its digital capabilities last year with the purchase of an HP Indigo WS6000 digital press to meet a growing demand for labels with variable content – particularly barcodes for food, pricing labels for retail items and healthcare products.

‘The WS6000 is HP’s most productive digital solution and we are able to offer the benefits of digital printing combined with the quality usually associated with offset,’ says Vugts. Vila Etiketten now offers its services to all market sectors except pharmaceutical, and plans to explore international market opportunities, particularly in Sweden and Denmark.

The WS6000 prints at up to 30 m/min in four colors. Vila Etiketten is transferring jobs up to 13,000 linear feet (around 4,000m) from conventional to digital printing, achieving better quality and productivity at a lower cost, according to Robbert Vugts. Vila Etiketten uses the 5 or 6-color capabilities of the WS6000 for 10-20 percent of its jobs. The extra white is needed to print on transparent labels and Vugts guesses the company would lose 10-15 percent of jobs without this capability.

‘Many of our customers, who have worked with conventional printers in the past, say they notice the cost savings that come with choosing digital print,’ says Vugts. ‘Customers no longer need to order 20,000 labels if they only require a few thousand, and they no longer need to keep excess stock. Instead, they can just re-order labels in short-runs at any time and be confident we will deliver a quick turnaround – a crucial requirement for some of our retail customers who need to order labels to promote the latest campaigns at short notice.’

Vila recently produced 2,000 labels for a limited edition of Dutch Whisky, ‘Dutch Genever’ from Zuiddam Distillers, on the WS6000. Each label had its own number and was printed using color and white ink on a silver adhesive material with a metallic ink effect. ‘The customer was impressed with the superior quality of the finished product, despite also being a very cost-effective solution,’ says Vugts. ‘They have already expressed an interest in using our WS6000 for future jobs.’

This article was published in L&L issue 2, 2011