Packaging

Bridgeshire Packaging & Display boosts POS capacity and wins new business with HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press

Tuesday 14. August 2012 - In this year of the London Olympics, businesses in the United Kingdom are taking the motto "faster, higher, stronger" far beyond the sports stadium. At UK based Bridgeshire Packaging & Display, the motto also aptly describes the motivation for expanding the company's digital printing capabilities. Seeking faster turnaround capabilities, higher margins and a stronger customer offering, the company was the first in the world to install an HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press.

Founded in 1993 as a corrugated sheet plant, Bridgeshire now offers a wide range of cardboard POS, free standing display units (FSDUs), pallet displays and off-shelf merchandisers to a large customer base. The company purchased its first digital printer five years ago as orders for short-run four-color work increased and it became too costly and time-consuming to depend only on screen printing.
Since then, Bridgeshire has increasingly focused its growth plans on the higher-margin POS market, while still maintaining its traditional packaging offering. As its POS business expanded, Bridgeshire saw it needed to increase its digital printing capacity even further, so it installed the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press in November 2011. Beforehand, Bridgeshire had estimated that 50-60 percent of its screen printing could to be moved to the HP Scitex Press, but has already surpassed that estimation.
“This was an integral part of our decision to buy the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press,” recalls Rob Booth, managing director at Bridgeshire. “We chose the press to increase our printing capacity and speed. Our customers’ buying habits are changing and we are expected to deliver orders much quicker now.”
Andy Whittle, production design director at Bridgeshire, adds: “With the speed and productivity of the HP Industrial Press, we can meet tighter deadlines without compromising the quality our customers are used to receiving. And, the fact that the press is scalable and modular means it will support our growing digital printing needs.”
Winning new business with enhanced digital printing capabilities
Even before the new press was fully commissioned, Bridgeshire and its customers were already seeing benefits. Anticipating its soon-to-be-available enhanced digital printing capabilities, Bridgeshire took on a particularly large pre-Christmas FSDU order for Morrisons supermarket chain. A long-time customer of Bridgeshire, Morrisons needed two FSDUs for each of its 400 stores every week for eight weeks (a total of 6,400 FSDUs). Bridgeshire outsourced the first part of the job to a company with two HP Scitex FB7500 Industrial Presses. Then, once the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press was commissioned, it moved the job over to the new press.
“The Morrisons job was the first that we did on the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press and it definitely met our expectations,” says Whittle. “By working three shifts every day, we were able to deliver a high-quality product under extremely tight deadlines – two to three days to print and assemble after receiving each of the designs. We could not have taken on this job without the new press.”
Now, less than six months later, Bridgeshire has moved almost all of its POS jobs, and some smaller runs (approximately 300 sheets or less) of its traditional flexo packaging, to the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press. Recently, the company also created 250 FSDUs for Lego Company Ltd. with the new press – a job that would have traditionally been outsourced to a litho printer. “Now we can do these kinds of jobs in-house with fast turnaround,” says Whittle. “We can compete with litho quality and also reduce costs. We have been able to pass on some of these costs savings to our customers while still increasing our margins.”
Versatile, fast-turnaround printing opens opportunities
Bridgeshire has also gained substrate flexibility with the new HP industrial press, which offers an advanced ink system and the ability to print on a wide variety of media up to 25 mm thick. “We print 90 percent of our POS on corrugated materials, and the new HP press handles these materials really well. In addition, the superior ink adherence has opened up a wide range of additional options for us in regards to shop signage and POS banners that we could not do before,” says Whittle.
“Without a doubt, the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press has enabled us to strengthen our relationship with existing customers, and we are also gaining new customers through referrals due to the speed and turnaround we can now provide.”
Following up its recent press purchase, Bridgeshire has ordered a fully automatic Esko Kongsberg XP digital cutter. With the combined capabilities of the HP Scitex FB7600 Industrial Press and the Esko Kongsberg XP digital cutter, Bridgeshire can enter into new markets such as the semi-permanent display market.
Whittle adds: “Having full onsite capabilities gives us a lot of added value over our competitors. We can control all aspects of our offering and provide faster turnaround. In this way, we are able to commit to deadlines and stand by them.”