Inkjet & Digital Printing

Food approval requirements make BS Labels select Xeikon

Wednesday 30. January 2013 - Unique food approved Xeikon QA-I toner makes the difference

Xeikon, an innovator in digital color printing, announced today that BS Labels invested in a Xeikon 3300. UK based (Leicestershire) BS Labels grew to be a leading supplier of high quality self-adhesive labels for the food, industrial, commercial and retail markets. With its vast production park of eight flexo and three letterpress presses, it sets itself apart with a rapid delivery of quality labels on a wide range of materials, offering all leading production techniques required. The main decision criteria for choosing to invest in the Xeikon 3300 were quality, availability of food approved toner technology and flexible performance.
Flexible performance for short to medium runs
Brand owners and their production managers require more and more flexibility of their label and packaging suppliers. They expect shorter runs of quality labels on a wide range of substrates for an ever larger number of SKU’s, a trend mainly driven by increased product versioning. The convertors are under time and cost pressure, definitely for shorter and medium runs where flexo and letterpress solutions by nature fall short in cost and turnaround time.
BS Labels took its time to compare digital press solutions and decided to go for the Xeikon 3300 system. Tony Pickering, Managing Director and owner of BS Labels, states: “The Xeikon 3300 solution is ideal to complement our large flexo operation. Not only will it make us much more competitive for short to medium runs, it will also allow us to take away the pressure on the flexo and letterpress department for quick turnaround jobs.”
Xeikon offers unique food approved toner technology
BS Labels complies with the BRC Global Standards, a suite of four industry-leading technical standards to enable the production, packaging, storage and distribution of safe food and consumer products.
The Xeikon QA-I toner is FDA approved for specific indirect and direct food contact applications and therefore fits perfectly into the BS Label approach. “It took us some time to decide for digital technology. Looking at the Xeikon toner, their compatibility towards food contact requirements were a key driver in our decision as we mainly operate in the food label market,” says Pickering.
Quality second to none
The Xeikon 3300 Series is a high performance digital press that sets the standard for digital label printing. Equipped with a high precision LED based imaging head, the press features a unique combination of 1200dpi resolution and 4 bit variable dot density. The result is superb image quality with vibrant colors, sharp details and subtle contrasts for high impact labels on standard label substrates. Filip Weymans, Xeikon director of segment marketing and business development for labels & packaging, explains: “Xeikon is proud that BS Labels, an important player in the food and beverage industry, appreciates and favors the quality and food safety aspects of the QA-I toner. This toner was specifically developed for label and packaging applications and has other characteristics like excellent lightfastness quality.”