Inkjet & Digital Printing

Vila Etiketten Expands Its Services with Installation of HP Indigo WS6600 Digital Press

Thursday 27. September 2012 - Company also upgrades existing HP Indigo WS6000 Digital Press

HP today announced that Vila Etiketten of Breda, The Netherlands, installed a new HP Indigo WS6600 Digital Press to expand its services and upgraded an existing HP Indigo WS6000 Digital Press to increase its digital label productivity.
Vila Etiketten is a label converter that uses different printing techniques to provide its customers with a wide range of labels for diverse applications. Its product portfolio includes self-adhesive labels with variable content, such as barcodes and price tags, as well as pricing labels for the food, retail and healthcare industries. Having entered the digital market only seven years ago, the company’s digital production now covers more than 60 per cent of its workload.
“For several consecutive years we experienced annual growth of up to 25 per cent,” said Robbert Vugts, managing director at Vila Etiketten. “To meet our increasing needs, we were looking for the most suitable machine with the right features to support our digital business and to help us with the production of high-quality, short-run printing.”
The HP Indigo WS6600 Digital Press was launched at Labelexpo 2011 and is designed for the special demands of label and package converting to achieve a high level of flexibility, efficiency and profitability. With HP Indigo ElectroInk White(1), customers can print on transparent and dark substrates. Furthermore, the press’s optional Inline Priming unit allows HP Indigo customers to print on standard, off-the-shelf substrates of all kinds including offset uncoated papers, helping to keep media costs low.
“Besides other benefits of the press, it was mainly the Inline Priming unit which was the decisive factor why we decided on this particular model. We are now able to expand our services with prints on uncoated materials,” he added.
Installed in June, the HP Indigo WS6600 Digital Press has already produced a large specialty job of 16 million 32 x 12mm price labels/stickers.
“The Dutch VAT (tax) rate is set to increase from 19 per cent to 21 per cent in October and therefore, we need to print new labels for the food and retail markets which reflect this new rate,” Vugts explained.
“Our new Indigo press is currently running for more than 10 hours a day in high-speed production in order to deliver the job in time. It is amazing how fast the press is working and we can barely keep up with the finishing processes. That’s the new challenge that we are facing now, which is indeed a good one to have,” he added.
Vila Etiketten offers in-house die-cutting finishing solutions to provide an end-to-end solution for its customers. The company purchased its first HP press, an HP Indigo press ws4500, in 2005. In 2010, it added an HP Indigo WS6000 Digital Press, which was recently upgraded to HP Indigo WS6600 specifications. Including the new press, the company has now three HP Indigo presses running.
Vila Etiketten has customers in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg and plans to expand its services to other countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, where it sees strong growth potential.
“Since the installation of our first HP Indigo press seven years ago, our business is continually growing each year. This has been made possible mainly through reliable HP technology and the fantastic support the team at HP provides for us,” Vugts concluded.
(1) Requires optional ElectroInk White ink kit