07.03.18
Founded in 2010, South African flexo printer Advanced Labels specializes in producing high quality labels and flexible packaging for a huge range of sectors, including pharmaceutical, chemical, home and personal care and FMCG.
“Our customers demand consistently high quality, rapid turnaround times and excellent service at a good price,” said Richard Jones, managing director of Advanced Labels. “Furthermore, environmental concerns are becoming increasingly important to them, so we’re always on the lookout for ways to reduce our environmental impact – as well as improving quality, consistency and speed of delivery.
At LabelExpo 2017 in Brussels, the company confirmed an investment in Fujifilm’s new Illumina LED curing solution, making it the first beta site for this technology in the EMEA region. The company also invested in Fujifilm 300 Series flexo inks.
Its first Illumina unit, retro-fitted to an existing press in March 2018, proved such a success that the company has now installed three more. In June 2018 they retrofitted two Illumina units to their other existing presses and had a third fitted to a brand new Nilpeter FA press.
With all four of the company’s flexo presses now curing with Illumina LED technology, Advanced Labels has become the first flexo printer in South Africa, and one of the first in the world, to operate with 100% LED UV curing technology.
“We have had the opportunity to run extensive tests for several months, comparing two identical presses, one curing with conventional UV and the other with Illumina LED,” Jones said. “We have recorded an 87.5% power reduction in the LED curing press, which, as well as leading to substantial cost savings, brings our goal of being 100% energy self-sufficient, through solar, much more clearly into focus. Furthermore, waste is down, we’re creating less pollution and a huge reduction in VOCs (and in noise and heat) has made an immediate and very noticeable improvement to our workplace environment.”
But the advantages go beyond the environmental.
“We’ve slashed our typical job make-ready time in half,” Jones continues. “Make-ready set-up now requires the use of 60% less material and typical job run times have been slashed by a third, meaning that overall throughput is up by a third as well.”
Jones also has praise for Fujifilm’s new 300 series inks.
“Since switching to the 300 Series inks, we’ve found that we can achieve the colors we need much faster than we could before, the viscosity is lower and color matching has become a much more straight-forward process,” he said.
“Our customers demand consistently high quality, rapid turnaround times and excellent service at a good price,” said Richard Jones, managing director of Advanced Labels. “Furthermore, environmental concerns are becoming increasingly important to them, so we’re always on the lookout for ways to reduce our environmental impact – as well as improving quality, consistency and speed of delivery.
At LabelExpo 2017 in Brussels, the company confirmed an investment in Fujifilm’s new Illumina LED curing solution, making it the first beta site for this technology in the EMEA region. The company also invested in Fujifilm 300 Series flexo inks.
Its first Illumina unit, retro-fitted to an existing press in March 2018, proved such a success that the company has now installed three more. In June 2018 they retrofitted two Illumina units to their other existing presses and had a third fitted to a brand new Nilpeter FA press.
With all four of the company’s flexo presses now curing with Illumina LED technology, Advanced Labels has become the first flexo printer in South Africa, and one of the first in the world, to operate with 100% LED UV curing technology.
“We have had the opportunity to run extensive tests for several months, comparing two identical presses, one curing with conventional UV and the other with Illumina LED,” Jones said. “We have recorded an 87.5% power reduction in the LED curing press, which, as well as leading to substantial cost savings, brings our goal of being 100% energy self-sufficient, through solar, much more clearly into focus. Furthermore, waste is down, we’re creating less pollution and a huge reduction in VOCs (and in noise and heat) has made an immediate and very noticeable improvement to our workplace environment.”
But the advantages go beyond the environmental.
“We’ve slashed our typical job make-ready time in half,” Jones continues. “Make-ready set-up now requires the use of 60% less material and typical job run times have been slashed by a third, meaning that overall throughput is up by a third as well.”
Jones also has praise for Fujifilm’s new 300 series inks.
“Since switching to the 300 Series inks, we’ve found that we can achieve the colors we need much faster than we could before, the viscosity is lower and color matching has become a much more straight-forward process,” he said.