The press, the firm’s first inkjet machine, was installed at the end of January and, according to director Paul Dunne, it has already helped secure significant volumes of new work.

He said that the firm looked at various digital presses at last year’s Labelexpo, including “mainstream” digital label presses from the likes of HP Indigo and other UV inkjet systems. However, the high investment requirement or substrate limitations of rival machines led him to opt for the circa £200,000 SurePress.

“We also just thought it was a simpler system to operate than the offset digital presses. It has fewer moving parts and, with its six-colour [CMYK plus orange and green] gamut, we can hit 92% of Pantone colours and with the resin coated pigments we get a durable print,” said Dunne.

“It’s opened a lot of doors for us because we can now print very fine vignettes on fine structure papers, whereas this was always a struggle before, and by profiling a wide range of materials it has opened up a whole new range of gloss and uncoated stocks.”

The 5m/min SurePress runs alongside the 17-staff company’s existing flexo presses and laser printers, with jobs finished on its existing flexo and foiling lines.

However, Dunne said that he was looking at adding additional finishing capabilities so that Label Tec could exploit the SurePress’s full 330mm web width.

“There will be a further investment, but at the moment we can finish labels on our foiling lines,” said Dunne.

The firm produces short to medium-length runs of work for a range of brand and trade customers across the food, beverage, cosmetics and pharmaceutical sectors.

According to Dunne, part of the reason for the investment was the increasing need across all markets for shorter runs, variable data and personalisation.

“They’re probably the areas where we see the biggest growth opportunity,” he said.