Richard Pullan is a man who feels strongly about what he does, and what he does most of the time is run his company, the Humberston, Lincolnshire-based label printer Kingsway Printers. As a result, he lives and breathes labels, just ask his long-suffering spouse.

"My wife gets fed up with me pointing out our labels when we go shopping. But it still gives me a buzz every time I see one, as I know this is what sells the product to the consumer," he says.

Pullan is perhaps biased as managing director of a label producer, but he makes a fair point. As he says, you can have the best product and container in the world, but if the label looks rubbish, the product won't sell.

It is this acknowledgement of the importance of quality, along with a passion for staying on top, that has prompted the 38-year old company to invest in the latest digital technology. As a result, Kingsway is a company very much in transition.
For example, the 40-staff business has just taken delivery of an HP Indigo ws4500 label press and an AB Graphic Omega Digicon Series 2 finishing machine.

"We've been in conventional litho for more than 25 years, but it got to the stage that we were outsourcing so much work that it made sense to bring digital in house," says Pullan.

It was not a decision the company took lightly, but it does have a history of adapting to the changing needs of its customers. It was established in 1972 by Richard Pullan's parents Jim and Mary as a commercial litho and letterpress printer, then moved into flexo in the early 1980s in response to customers requiring labels in roll format. At this time, Richard, fresh from college, joined the company, starting in production, moving into estimating and later becoming a director.

As UV flexo advanced, so did the company's investment plans and in the early 1990s, they took delivery of six- and eight-colour UV presses. Now, with a turnover of £4m, the family-owned and run business has kept up with print's evolution once more with the digital move.

Different demands
The DNA of Kingsway has changed with the requirements of its customers, which include supermarkets, as well as pharmaceutical, health and beauty care clients. According to Pullan, customers are demanding labels in shorter runs and so he realised that now was the time to move into digital.

"Technology has driven the market. People are considering short-run now because it's a viable and attractive alternative. The importance of digital printing within the label sector cannot be underestimated. It is only a matter of time before digital label presses become the major print process in the label industry," he adds.

The company has already been enjoying the benefits of digital by undertaking jobs it wouldn't or couldn't have done previously. For example, Pullan says it has just printed 36,000 labels with 48 different variants.

"There's no way that could have been done economically before. Especially as we completed it in under a day."
With its digital press bedded-in, the next step for Kingsway is to consolidate and expand several of the units that currently make up its 2,322m2 site in Humberston. "We didn't want to do everything at once," reveals Pullan.

The warehousing expansion comes as the company has found that the demand for shorter, personalised jobs has been coupled with clients requiring less stock to be held, favouring a just-in-time approach. Pullan says an increasing number of supermarket suppliers no longer want to hold stock and have the costs associated with it, instead demanding jobs when they need them.

This is not to say that conventional label production is still not the major aspect of what it does. Pullan recalls a job last year where a local fish supplier to a major supermarket had been let down by their printer and needed 60,000 labels turned around over a weekend. Thankfully, Kingsway obliged and the job was a success. The job had to be right first time and any problems with the plates or die would have been a disaster - fresh fish does not stay fresh for long after all.
Although it is still early days for Kingsway and its foray into digital print, Pullan fully expects its prominence to increase in the coming years.

"It currently makes up only a few percent of what we do, but I can see that becoming 20% in the next year," he says.
And with 2009 proving to be the best in the company's history, you can well imagine the business enjoying similar growth throughout 2010 and beyond.

Kingsway Printers
Location Humberston, north-east Lincolnshire
Turnover £4m
Staff 40
Clients Include supermarkets, beauty and care firms, pharmaceutical companies
Kit HP Indigo ws4500, Mark Andy 2200 label presses, Gallus Arsoma