Label-form, a one-stop shop and specialist label printer, has reaffirmed its commitment to Durst, a manufacturer of advanced digital printing and production technologies, with another investment in its Tau platform.

The first commercial job run on its new Tau 330 RSC E single-pass inkjet 5-color press (CMYK and white) with a chiller unit was for a new customer, Henley Distillery, a local drinks producer requiring labels, which would have been impossible to deliver without the new machine that has opened up new markets for the company.

“We felt that Durst had moved on a lot further with the digital inkjet technology and they were by far the front runner,” says Label-form commercial director Stewart Serls. “With the inkjet, it’s the closest you get to screen printing – there is hardly any difference in quality. We see many benefits from our investments. First, the 1200 dpi makes one heck of a difference in terms of quality, and the white provides opacity and allows other colours to become stronger.

“The Durst complements alternative technologies, can easily register with other machines and now prints applications that account for around 35% of our business in terms of sales. Another commercial advantage is the Ink Save Mode from Durst, which we believe will make significant cost savings over a traditional CMYK press as we expand even more into digital production.”

Serls, managing director Debbie Mellett and operations production manager Paul Holder are the backbone of Label-form and together have clocked up more than 100 years working at the Maidenhead, Berkshire-based company that is approaching its 60th year anniversary, has a £2 million turnover and employs 21 staff. Label-form’s markets included cosmetics, industrial, homeopathic, and food and drink.

The Durst Tau RSC 330 E was also supplied with a chiller unit from Durst, which has proved to be a massive help for expanding the range of substrates for printing, including difficult ones such as clear on clear on polypropylene (PP).

Mellett, who has worked at Label-form for 47 years, comments, “Technology and the markets have moved on so much that we started looking at investing in new machines three years ago, but Covid slowed down the process. We were never forced into the change, but took the time to have a comprehensive evaluation of the market. We looked at three other machines, two failed at the demo stage because they were not up to the standard we expected and the other was also no comparison to the Durst. She added: “Service is also important. So much now can be done online. In the rare times if we have a problem, online support is available extremely quickly, and in the rare event that we ever need an engineer from Durst, one is here extremely quickly.”

Simon Cosh, labels business development manager of Durst UK & Ireland, says, “Customers today have the freedom to decide to what degree they expand their solutions with Durst. We are delighted that following an extensive review of the market, Label-form decided to reinvest in our market-leading Tau platform that I am confident will help the company to become even more profitable by expanding further into the growth digital printing markets. Minimizing production waste, stock obsolescence, reducing power consumption and time to market are all important factors in today’s rapidly evolving markets where every label can now be unique with digital production.”