The Label Shoppe, the in-plant printing division of Gaytan Foods in City of Industry, CA, has installed a Screen Truepress Jet L350UV inkjet label press.

“The entire Label Shoppe team – management, press operators, prepress and sales —– unanimously supported the purchase,” says Ryan Gaytan, vice president of Gaytan Foods and The Label Shoppe’s general manager. “Management will gain margin and higher customer satisfaction rates. Press operators are excited to learn new technology. Prepress loves the idea of being able to print existing customer files with less retouching. The sales team is simply drooling over the opportunity to sell new print products.”

A snack food manufacturer specializing in fried pork rinds, cheese puffs and related items, Gaytan Foods started life as a neighborhood market in 1935. Husband and wife Florencio and Jesus Gaytan sold everything from dairy products to meat at their small store. Gaytan Foods bought lots of labels for its products but found that the cost of relying on outside vendors was high and the delivery slow. The Label Shoppe was established in 1991 to get the work done in-house faster and at a lower cost.

Using four flexographic presses, The Label Shoppe prints custom pressure sensitive labels for private label products and Gaytan Foods’ various branded snacks. Obviously, food is the top market for the shop’s labels, with beverages a close second. Orders for labels and tags also come from manufacturers of cosmetics, electronic components and automotive parts.

“While large national label printers with big corporate contracts may take four weeks to deliver 1 million labels, our customers need us to deliver five, 10, 50 and even 100,000 labels on a same-day or next-day basis,” Gaytan points out. “As we continued to grow, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the demand using our traditional flexo presses, even with a digital workflow and using ‘pit stop’ changeovers. Because we follow the mantra of ‘continuous improvement,’ I am always looking for ways to reduce lead times, improve quality and increase margins.”

Gaytan hadn’t ruled out augmenting his pressroom with a digital printing system, but he wasn’t sold on the technology – yet. “I have been following the evolution of digital label printing technology since I became general manager of The Label Shoppe in 2001,” he says. “Disappointed, I always arrived at the same conclusion: The right combination of capital investment, operating cost, print quality and throughput never materialized.”

That is, Gaytan says, until he viewed samples printed last spring on the Truepress Jet L350UV. “Something was different compared to other competitive drop-on-demand inkjet print samples I had evaluated over the past several years,” he says. “Gradients were smooth, and solids were dense and free of pinholes and streaks. Most of the digitally printed samples were virtually indistinguishable from their analog counterparts.”

One of the key benefits of the Truepress Jet L350UV is its high running speed. At 164 feet per minute, it enables maximum productivity in the minimum amount of time. With a printing width of up to 12.6 inches and the ability to print on material from 3.9 inches to 13.7 inches wide, the Truepress Jet L350UV provides productivity of 173.2 square feet per minute.

To boost overall productivity, The Label Shoppe opted for the AB Graphic International Digilite 2 label-converting line. The compact inline finishing system includes a laminator for self-wound and linered laminates, electronic dispro, rotary scissor knife and electronically adjustable back-scorer.

“After a very thorough internal analysis, we determined that the Truepress Jet L350UV was a profitable fit for at least 57 percent of The Label Shoppe’s jobs,” Gaytan adds. “More specifically, even if I didn’t pursue one extra dollar of incremental sales, I would capture enough additional margin on our existing jobs to justify the lease payment. The math was a no-brainer.”