Indiana Converter Finishes Ahead of the Competition with Its EFI Jetrion 4900ml Digital PressChallenge:Twenty-five-year-old, family-owned Matrix Label Systems has built successful, long-term customer relationships based on its ability to innovate and create new, impactful solutions to businesses’ evolving needs. Founded by company President and CEO Jerry Perrill as a stock label distributorship, Matrix Label Systems took its first big, strategic step to grow the business in the early 1990s, when it brought label converting in-house.

Revenues took off as the company began offering label printing for area product manufacturers. Over time, the Perrill family built Matrix Label Systems into a top-tier, high-volume custom label supplier. The company’s five flexographic presses, and its expansive storage and fulfillment operation, have made it a preferred supplier to companies in the pharmaceutical, cosmetics and consumer products industries that need high-quality, reliable packaging supply chain management.

“Recently, we’ve seen increased demand for shorter run lengths and multiple SKUs, things that flexo isn’t suited for because of the cost of plates and die tooling,” says Brett Perrill, Jerry’s son and Matrix Label Systems’ marketing director.

EFI Jetrion Digital PressCase Study

Matrix Label Systems provides innovative

answers to a wide range of label, tag and

packaging challenges, building on its

history of customer service in the stock

and custom label markets.

Founded as a broker/distributor for the

postal industry 25 years ago, the company

started doing its own label converting in

1990 to exercise greater quality control

and reduce turnaround times. Since

then, Matrix Label has become a leading

pressure-sensitive label manufacturer,

using five flexographic presses and an EFI

Jetrion digital press to meet customers’

high-quality custom label requirements.

Today, the company serves a broad range

of businesses, supplying exceptional

label and packaging products that meet

rigorous customer requirements. Matrix

Label backs up its converting work with

superior service, providing the expertise,

knowledge and focus that corporations

and brands need to turn their ideas into

great products.

Matrix Label Systems, Inc.

4692 S. County Road 600 E.

Plainfield, IN 46168

www.matrixlabel.com

That presented a challenge because Matrix Label Systems’ flexo operation goes beyond a typical, 13-inch narrow-web profile: the company’s smallest flexo press is 16 inches wide, and some of its presses are 20 inches. Although more cost effective for high-volume production, the wider configurations made it difficult to offer competitive quotes on short-run work.

Solution: The Perrills knew digital printing was the best answer to their clients’ short-run needs. After conducting extensive research, they determined that the newest generation of digital presses had overcome the technology’s quality issues. However, Matrix Label Systems needed to avoid digital press pricing contracts that would potentially limit the cost effectiveness or profitability of short-run work.

“We looked at an electrophotographic digital label press, but the turn-off for us there was that it came with click charges,” Brett Perrill says.

And, while inkjet digital label presses usually do not have a click charge, many of them present another issue: water-based inks that are incompatible with many standard label stocks. In late 2012, the company saw that it could get the best mix of run-length flexibility, substrate selection, cost-effective production and quality with an EFI™ Jetrion® 4900ml UV inkjet digital label press.

“The number one selling point for us with EFI Jetrion was the fact that it is UV curable inkjet,” Perrill says. Not only does it run on a wide range of standard converting substrates, it offers exceptional durability, so there is no need to spend more time or money adding a protective coating or lamination to the company’s digitally printed labels.

“I haven’t had to coat a single digital job so far with our Jetrion press—the ink is very durable,” says Perrill. “The only way I have been able to get it off a substrate is with a razor blade.”

The Jetrion 4900ml also has the advantage of fully integrated, in-line finishing, which means Matrix Label Systems can complete work using a single operator instead of two or more staff members. Perrill also appreciates that the Jetrion press’s highly accurate in-line finishing does not require the costly substrate waste needed to set up jobs on an offline system.

“In-line finishing with the Jetrion made more sense for us from a scrap standpoint,” he says. “We’re operating with no tooling or dies, and we’re able to input a job, run it and get a finished product at the end.”

Solution:

“We use metallic substrates and white inks on our Jetrion press to simulate foil stamping, and the effect is amazing.”

Brett Perrill Marketing Director,

Matrix Label Systems

Results:Now, with its Jetrion press, Matrix Label Systems is branching out to offer more to its customers.

“I’m launching products that I had been trying to get off the ground for years,” says Perrill. “There are opportunities that we couldn’t pursue before we had the Jetrion press.”

Some clients are even taking advantage of the Jetrion press’s ability to create serialized applications. For example, using the Label Designer software on the Jetrion press’s EFI Fiery® digital front end system, Matrix Label Systems added data fields to an existing client’s inventory control tag job file. The flexo-printed tags are kept in storage, and the client periodically sends data for tags to be completed with individualized order number and bar code information. Matrix Label Systems takes the tags, runs the required quantity through the Jetrion press and, without incurring any waste, quickly provides a complete and accurate serialized, variable-data order that complies with the client’s specific inventory supply-chain requirements.

The Jetrion 4900ml also makes Matrix Label Systems a more-complete supplier because the company can now take on short-run jobs, as well as multi-SKU and versioned jobs that its current customers may have produced elsewhere.

Results:

“We’re still expanding what we can do with Jetrion. It has opened a book of business for us that wasn’t there before.”

Brett Perrill Marketing Director,

Matrix Label Systems

EFI Jetrion Digital PressCase Study

11/12/2013

6750 Dumbarton Circle Fremont, CA 94555

650-357-3500

www.efi.com

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One job Matrix Label Systems won since installing the press — a series of colorful stickers requiring numerous text and color changes — would have required dozens of plate changes in the past, killing productivity and driving costs through the roof.

“When you are quoting a job like this, something that requires as many as 60 different plate changes, it’s difficult to go after that work with a flexo press. But with our Jetrion, all the changes on that job are handled on the fly.”