When
it comes to quality and perfection, Reynders Label Printing knows just how to
deliver. From its humble beginnings over half a century ago, when Mr Emile
Reynders founded the company in 1959 printing stationery in the family home, it
has since expanded to become one of the leading label specialists in Europe.
Headquartered in Boechout, Belgium with six specialised printing divisions and
eight production facilities spread throughout Europe and Asia, Reynders Label
Printing prides itself in its commitment to delivering the very best in design
and label printing in which innovation, quality and customer service are of
paramount importance.
Today,
Reynders, which remains a family-run business, has over 60 printing presses and
more than 450 printing stations covering flexography, offset, letterpress,
screen, dry toner, wet toner and ink jet printing technologies, enabling the
company to offer one of the broadest ranges of label printing equipment for a
host of applications. It has been this
focus on maintaining its leading position through investment in the very latest
label printing equipment that led to the installation of the first Domino N600i
digital colour label press at its Belgium production facility.
Chief
Executive Officer Marc Reynders explains, “Over the past few years, label
printing has been facing new challenges with customers demanding ever tighter
delivery deadlines, shorter average run lengths, more personalised data; but
still the highest quality of end product. As a result, we needed to find
solutions that can not only cope with these changing demands, but that also
means adjusting our service offering for our customers. It ultimately helps us
to move our business forward in line with the changing dynamics of the
industry.”
When
Marc and his team first saw an early technology demonstration of the N600i at
Ipex 2010, they were immediately impressed. For a digital printing press, it
offered much higher levels of productivity combined with improved print quality
for ink jet.
“We
already had a number of HP Indigos, the latest Xeikon technologies and three
Agfa Dotrix digital label presses all of which were doing a good job,”
continues Marc, “But to take Reynders to the next level in digital label
production we needed a solution that could offer high quality digital printing
at significantly increased speeds. The N600i was just what we were looking
for.”
The
Domino N600i four colour digital label press offers a native 600dpi print
resolution and uses one of the smallest drop sizes (6pl) to deliver the highest
quality output onto a range of coated paper and plastic label stocks, and
operates at speeds of 50-75 metres per minute. Combined with a standard 333mm
(13”) wide web width it provides up to 1,500m² of print per hour. In addition,
by varying the droplet sizes delivered from a single print head combined with
the composition of the ink, the N600i can reproduce a wide colour gamut
including over 80% of the pantone colour range.
With
so many label press technologies installed across Reynders multiple sites, the
fact that Domino had integrated the Esko front end into its N600i added to its
appeal to Reynders and assisted with its integration.
“We
already worked with the Esko workflow and this together with the intuitive user
interface made working with the N600i so much more straightforward,” said Marc.
Installation
didn’t go without its challenges, especially with the company agreeing to be a
beta test site for Domino’s N600i, but both the Reynders and Domino teams
worked together to ensure any issues were addressed and the installation met
all requirements. “It’s fair to say that with any beta site, installation can
take longer than usual, but we are delighted with the outcome,” confirms Marc. “We
always had complete confidence in Domino throughout the process. They listened
to our requirements, were extremely helpful in exploring ways to overcome any
issues and conducted the installation with the utmost professionalism.”
Within
a short time, the operations team had the N600i running at production speeds of
50 metres per minute, a significantly higher rate than the company’s existing
digital technologies, and were using the press for new mid-volume applications
of up to 3,000 metres, well above the 1,000 metres limit they typically would
schedule on digital machines.
The
increased speed of throughput brought additional challenges for the operators,
as it meant they could no longer manually check for rejects and quality of
output, as was the procedure for the company’s slower running solutions. As a
result, Reynders installed an automated vision system onto the N600i line that
could cope with verification of output at such high speeds, reducing operator
intervention and adding further to production efficiencies.
To
further develop the flexibility and capabilities of the N600i, Reynders and the
Domino team are working together to develop new inks as well as review the
integration of inline die-cutting technology within the N600i production line.
“Although
it is still early days, we are extremely impressed with the capabilities of the
N600i,” enthuses Marc, who is already looking to exploit the potential it can
offer in terms of longer term new business opportunities.
“The N600i has certainly lived up to our
expectations of high resolution, high quality output at significantly higher
operational speeds. The operation has been reliable and we are able to run much
longer production jobs than we would normally print with digital technology, in
this respect it is more targeted at replacing what we would normally run on
flexo machines”
“If
the N600i continues to perform to our expectations and we can achieve all our
business goals, we will be considering further investment in this technology in
the future,” concludes Marc.
