Major American label converting group, Multi-Color, has ordered a second label press from Italian narrow web manufacturer, Omet
After designing and installing a press that combines flexo and rotogravure print units – the first of its kind in the United States – Omet has secured an order for a second machine from one the America’s largest label converting groups, Multi-Color Corporation.Multi-Color produces work for over 330 of the best known brands across a wide sector of the global market. This includes labels for foodstuff and beverages, personal care and health and beauty, as well as household and automotive products. The company offers a complete package of services that includes specialist and individual packaging solutions for more than 650 customers spread across the Americas. Multi-Color’s service ranges from graphic design for packaging right up to finding the best place on the shelf to display the products.
With eight production facilities, 650 employees, and a 2007 turnover predicted to exceed US$220m, NASDAQ-listed Multi-Color Corporation is headquartered in Sharonville, Ohio.
It is renowned as one of the most important label producers worldwide, particularly among those using inmould technology (IML). Multi-Color’s production capabilities also include heat-transfer (HTL), cut and stack and pressure sensitive labels, as well as shrink labels.
With a pressing need to fulfill international obligations to its various customers, Multi-Color selected Omet technology as the best way to expand its print capability, reasoning that only an Omet press would offer the flexibility of supply needed to satisfy its customers’ increasing demand for individual decorative solutions.
The culmination of this was the installation of an Omet Varyflex machine, specially designed to combine flexo and rotogravure printing at the company’s main production facility in Sharonville, historically a wide web plant.
The new Omet pressis not only the first narrow web press to be installed at the plant, but it is also the first to be configured for flexo, gravure, screen, and foil platforms, setting new standards of print quality and productivity.
The choice of an Omet solution, according to Don Kneir, president of Multi-Color’s Decorative Solutions Division, “originates in our desire to go on being a market leader with innovative decorative solutions. This new technology solves one of the major market problems, namely supplying complex and intricate graphics in a timely and efficient way from the cost viewpoint.”
It was Omet’s pioneering design concept that impressed Multi-Color most. Jack Mackert, operational vice president, says, “because the Omet has such precise register characteristics, the combination of different print technologies that can be interchanged anywhere in the press line makes the Varyflex unique in the world, and allows us to produce different and very high-definition products.”
A close working partnership developed over recent months, has allowed Omet and Multi-Color to explore new and important development opportunities. Already, a second combination VaryFlex line was delivered to Multi-Color in February 2008.
Omet sales director, Marco Calcagni, says, “It is very satisfying to be chosen as a cooperative partner by such an important group on the world scene as Multi-Color, and particularly pleasing to secure a second order so soon after the first. I believe this indicates how well received Omet’s technology is becoming around the world.
“I am delighted that our design and engineering teams are gaining recognition for their innovation and the flexibility it brings to converters. It allows Omet to provide advanced solutions to ever more demanding customers.”
