Coast Label Company has acquired a 13” Durst Tau 330E digital UV inkjet label press, the Southern California custom label manufacturer’s first production class digital press. Under the ownership of President & CEO Craig Moreland for more than 25 years, the company has grown through a devotion to innovation in flexo, screen and now digital label printing. Coast Label Company is a four-time winner of TLMI’s prestigious Eugene Singer Award for Best Managed Company.

According to Moreland, there were several reasons Coast Label has been transitioning to digital, citing efficiency as well as growing customer demand for full color and multiple versions on even the simplest industrial labels. “That becomes time consuming and expensive to do,” he says, “ especially in low volumes on flexo equipment.”

Coast Label Company chose the Tau after a long consideration on what would deliver the best results for its largest verticals, which include healthcare and high-performance industrial label segments. “We just hadn’t found a piece of equipment that we wanted to own,” Moreland says. “We offer UL-recognized components and other products that have a strong need for ink performance, adhesive performance and substrate performance – this is where the toner technologies don’t really work very well for our needs.”

Moreland continues, “This year at Labelexpo, it was clear that UV digital label printing had arrived in terms of quality as well as speed – that was one of the things that finally tipped us toward the Tau 330E. With the Tau, we’ve got the enhanced capabilities of a very durable ink set that, in a lot of cases, will not require overlamination. It certainly is fast and will not require any delays for making printing plates. We also expect to be able to make labels with lower levels of waste, which ties into our TLMI LIFE Certified Facility environmental initiatives. We’ll be able to do things faster and offer better service, in addition to enhanced products with a very high level of quality and repeatability.”

As the market evolves, service times and ordering strategies are evolving as well, Moreland says, adding that Coast Label looks forward to being able to offer new ways of purchasing as well as new products. “We see it as game-changing to be able to offer shorter runs with lots of versioning at a competitive price. We already do a lot of work in the variable information space with consecutive numbers and bar codes, and database jobs. The Durst Tau further enhances our capabilities in this area,” explains Moreland.

Emily Kroll, Business Director of Label & Specialty Packaging Systems for Durst Image Technology US, comments, “With its focus on specialty custom solutions, its highly regarded third-party certifications, and its new Durst Tau 330E acquisition, Coast Label truly stands apart as a premier national provider of labels and packaging solutions,” she says. “We are proud to have an innovative leader like Coast Label as the first West Coast installation of the Tau.”

The Tau 330E is a UV inkjet label press printing 8-inch or 13-inch widths in four or five colors at speeds of up to 157 fpm and a resolution of up to 1,260 dpi. The system has been engineered with particular attention to equipment cost while maintaining the speed and printing quality of the flagship Tau 330 label press. By reducing the color offering from seven in the original Tau 330, Durst is able to offer a more economical model.

Kroll notes that Coast Label has combined the Tau 330E with the Grafisk Maskinfabrik (GM) DC330 Mini semi-rotary finishing system with inline integration, thus creating a seamless digital workflow.