Dan@BLP Labels said:
The only way it would be more cost effective is if you do a lot of private labeling with hundreds to thousands of skus. Tina - just curious... can you print 250,000 4 color process labels cost effectively?
I have noticed the exact opposite. It becomes way more cost effective to use an actual Flexographic Label company the larger you quantities get. We can print 250,000 4 color process 3 X 5 labels in approx. 4-5 hours. (and that is taking into account lunches and breaks)
Are you figuring in your time to all your cost equasions? I don't know how many labels you go through but some of the digital/ribbon/inkjet printers I've seen out there can barely do 1000 labels in a day. And that is for a simple 2-3 color label at the lowest quality setting. I would like to learn more about the printer that you have. Can you email me specs? We have people ask about this type of thing all the time. Just like Mike was inquiring in this thread and the more help I can provide the better.
You have to bear in mind, we're not using a standard inkjet... Not for the price we paid. Our printer heat bonds the ink to the paper and can print double sided, collated, we can add a photocopy attachment, and scanner for another couple of thousand, although, for those functions we're using a $49 BJC all-in-one. The printer is the Canon C3200 Imagerunner.
I agree, when you get up there so that all you're printing is labels, we're into the flexo. But, in the meantime, we're saving a small fortune to have waterproof labels and the printer is also used for all of our marketing pieces too.
With the printer we've got, we could easily print over 100 labels a minute. And, I can do it long distance, as in, if I needed to alter something for a label and I was out of town, I could do it from Toronto, and have our staff overnight it to us. So, once we got past a certain number of bottles, it became highly cost effective to buy the printer. (We leased it for the first year). Because we have begun to do so much co-packing and private label work, our way, is highly cost-effective... for us. But I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. The key to why this is so cost effective for us is because we're printing over 100 different labels at any given time, and the fees from flexo to set-up every one of those labels at that level is anything BUT cost-effective. That said, When I start printing 250,000 labels a day, well, then it's obviously time to out-source again.
Cost-wise, we're printing our labels at about 2 cents a piece, full colour, waterproof and the only drawback we have is if we want a gloss finish, we have to take them to flexo and get them varnished. We haven't put the gloss on it yet, but we've priced how to do that and right now, printing the labels ourselves, varnishing them and then cutting them, actually saves us about 5-15 cents a label. That adds up.
Not everyone can run through their mid-range printing needs the way we have, most don't have an extra $20K in cash flow to tie up in a printer. But then, we are doing things a little differently than most.
In fact, based on what we have experienced, our average colleague out there isn't going to see the explosive growth we've seen. Mostly because they aren't doing what we do, nor are they doing it where we're doing it. And without that explosive growth, they're going to grow one sauce at a time, and flexo is a good place to be.
Our diverse printing needs requires the printer we purchased and it is justified by our business plan... But, that's us. I can't see you selling this sort of printer to your customers, but if you have smaller job runs this might be worth looking at to supplement your own printing abilities.
Email me if you can't find the specs for the printer.
T
