Top-tier Label Supplier Repacorp Intensifies Growth Strategies

Inkjet Solutions Case Study
Established in 1974, Repacorp
has grown from a firm representing
printing corporations to a fullservice print provider with
170 employees and three
manufacturing plants located
in Ohio, Wisconsin and Arizona.
Top-tier Label Supplier Repacorp
Intensifies Growth Strategies, Boosting its
Digital Label Market Share with Jetrion
Challenge:
Repacorp is aimed to
In a highly diversified label industry where converters serve many
capitalize on the fast-growing
different types of manufacturers, winning new business requires
digital label market.
developing a unique point of differentiation —the ability to provide
high-quality, affordable short-run label services that others either
can’t or won’t offer.
For Repacorp, differentiation–and offering greater value to
customers–meant finding an answer for the many quick-turn,
short-run requests it was turning away. “If a customer wanted a
run of 5,000 or 10,000 labels, and needed the labels by the end the
day, we could not handle it,” says Repacorp’s president, Tony Heinl.
“The time and costs for die tooling alone made it impossible.”
Repacorp does flexographic printing and has a number of 10-inch and 20-inch presses at
its various plants, but its short-run digital capability, via EFI™ Jetrion® presses, has given the
company a corporate renewal.
The company first started exploring digital printing in 2006. Two years later, after seeing that
inkjet technology had improved tremendously, Repacorp purchased its first digital label press.
The company hasn’t looked back, taking full advantage of increased business opportunities that
have ultimately led to the installation of four additional digital presses. Repacorp is now one of
the largest producers of inkjet-printed labels in the U.S.
Solution
While the company had a strong reputation for quality, Repacorp’s management realized there
were a growing number of companies with the same quality and productivity needs, but not at
the higher run quantities required for cost-competitive flexographic printing.
In a challenging economy, it is not unusual for orders to be slashed by more than half of previous
order quantities, and that’s where short-run digital makes economical sense for many customers.
“With the economy being what it has been for the past few years, companies are looking to
reduce costs any way they can, and inventory control with short-run printing has become a big
source of cost-savings,” explains Heinl. “It has led to a lot of new business — companies that
used to do longer-run jobs at other converters are coming to us because of our short-run
digital capabilities.”
The company’s Jetrion presses–Jetrion 4000, 4830 and 4900 presses installed in Repacorp’s
Ohio plant, a 4900 press installed in its Wisconsin plant and a 4830 press installed in its Arizona
plant–also provide a distinct competitive advantage in the fast-growing digital label space.
“We’re extremely happy with the quality we get from our Jetrions,” says Heinl, “and so are
our customers.”
Results
Solution:
“Usually our digital runs are
15,000-20,000 feet, but that
changes if you are doing
jobs with a lot of SKUs, the
quantity that runs on digital
can go up considerably.”
— Tony Heinl
President
Repacorp
Printing with the Jetrions leaves as little as six feet of waste on a job — and zero waste on the
Jetrion 4900. Plus, the printing information is digitally stored, eliminating the need to re-match
colors when jobs are reordered. The printed output is near-photographic quality and is second to
none in its category.
Inkjet Solutions Case Study
“We considered toner-based or electrophotographic digital presses, but we like the fact that with
Jetrion inkjet presses, there are no click charges,” Heinl says. “We like that the Jetrion presses
print on most materials without requiring a special coating.”
“If you look at how electrophotography works,” Heinl adds, “those presses have thousands of
moving parts, much more than what is needed with an inkjet device, so there’s that much more
risk of a mechanical issue. On the other hand, it is hard to beat the reliability we’ve had with the
Jetrion presses since 2008. We once went over a year and a half without a Jetrion service person
setting foot in our facility.”
Repacorp regularly runs 50 different types of standard labelstock substrates on its Jetrions, the
same materials as used on the company’s flexo presses. The ability to use the same substrates
makes switching jobs to digital much easier, plus it reduces inventory cost and hassles. Jetrion’s
opaque white capability allows Repacorp to print on clear polyester with a highly opaque white
lay-down, a feature that further expands the company’s reach into food label markets.
Repacorp’s Jetrion 4900 presses have the additional benefit of fully digital in-line laser die-cutting,
a feature that can cut labor requirements and production costs by as much as two thirds. “We
can really do more with less labor,” says Heinl. “Instead of having one operator for the press,
one for the die cutter and one for the rewinder, we run all those functions in-line on the Jetrion
4900 with a single operator.”
“A lot of our growth comes from customers finding out that they can really do four-color process
labels with virtually no setup, and with no tooling cost for die cutting,” Heinl adds. “Those
factors drive out a lot of the cost that made short-run labels unaffordable in the past.”
REPACORP COST ANALYSIS:
FLEXO PRINTING
Plates
$ 400
DIGITAL PRINTING
$
0
0
Die
$ 700
$
Set-up, run, waste & die cut
$ 800
$ 300
Total:
$ 1,900
$ 300
Digital Cost Benefits (Retail)
Based on: 1,000 rectangular labels with rounded corners,
2.75” x 4.25”, 4-color process, one version
Now thoroughly convinced of the opportunities inkjet label printing presents, Repacorp expects
that digital will be a driving growth factor for the future. Beyond short-run printing, digital is
helping the company expand a niche in sequentially numbered and barcoded label work for
specialty applications. And product manufacturers that Repacorp serves are beginning to
leverage the real benefits digital printing provides with multi-SKU marketing: using product
labels to divide a larger quantity of packaged goods into smaller, more customized lots that
boost retail sales.
Multi-SKU opportunities take a variety of forms, like creating versions of product labels in
different languages, new designs for regional markets, limited-edition seasonal packaging and
special cause-related labels (where a portion of the proceeds go to support causes like breast
cancer research), just to name a few.
Because of the costs required to create flexographic printing plates for each version in a multiSKU job, this type of work lends itself to digital printing. At Repacorp, it means high-volume
work on its Jetrions that can bring real value to its customers in the form of greater product
sell-through.
Results:
“It is hard to beat the reliability
we’ve had with the Jetrion
presses since 2008. We
once went over a year and
a half without a Jetrion
service person setting foot
in our facility.”
— Tony Heinl
President
Repacorp
Beat the competition and profit with EFI’s integrated Fiery ®,
VUTEk®, Jetrion®, EFI Wide Format, Print MIS and Web-to-Print
solutions. Visit www.efi.com to learn more.
Why EFI?
EFI™ (www.efi.com) helps businesses worldwide bring their
visions and goals to life with a scalable, digital product portfolio.
Our powerful servers; controllers; RIPs; inkjet printers, and precise
color and imaging solutions help companies increase their brand
recognition and market reach on signs, buildings, bus wraps,
graphic displays and more. Our business automation software
helps companies work faster and more cost-effectively. Our
office, enterprise and mobile cloud solu­tions help companies
create, access, and communicate impactful information that can
win them more business.
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Foster City, CA 94404
650-357-3500
www.efi.com
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4/11/13