Xeikon, an innovator in digital printing technology, announces that Forlabels S.A., a leading labeling and flexible packaging printer in Greece, opted for the Xeikon technology to support its growing digital business. With a strong presence in the local food and agricultural market, Forlabels easily distinguished the increasingly important trend of product versioning. Avgerinos Chatzichrysos, general and commercial manager of Forlabels, sees a clear shift with brand owners expecting shorter runs of quality labels on a wider range of substrates for producing a larger number of product versions. To cope with this demand of higher production capacity and to serve the emerging market trends, Forlabels required more reliable performance of its production plant, with shorter turnaround times and competitive costs.

“Choosing the Xeikon 3500 was a decision based on criteria that combined consistency, performance, highest print quality and availability of food approved toner technology. Xeikon offers more than just a digital label press; it offers a powerful engine that has been designed with tools that are built around the latest requirements and trends of today’s labels and packaging market,” says Chatzichrysos.

 “We welcome the capabilities of the Xeikon press that provides high quality, productivity and color consistency. In addition, there are more benefits to  the Xeikon technology that we highly value, such as the compatibility towards food contact requirements, the design strategies around eco-objectives and eco-responsible manufacturing," Chatzichrysos adds.

The Xeikon 3500 Digital Press installed at Forlabels is running on Xeikon’s ICE toner; offering the capability to print on heat sensitive substrates like PE and direct thermal labels. At the same time, ICE offers the advantages of dry toner technology for 1200 dpi quality, superb productivity, high lightfastness, flexibility to print on conventional substrates without the need to use a primer, and sustainability of the complete production solution.

Forlabels also works with Xeikon Color Control to ensure accurate reproduction of brand or customer specific colors with minimal time and effort. Xeikon Color Control enables the company to create color tables for specific colors providing a much better control over the output quality, making color matching better, quicker and more consistent. Using VariLane, Xeikon’s software plug-in to the Xeikon X-800 Digital Front-End (DFE), Forlabels can print labels of not only different product stock keeping units (SKUs), but of different sizes, combining them together on the same print run to maximize efficiency, with minimal human intervention.

“Forlabels is renowned as one of the most rapidly advancing labeling and flexible packaging companies in Greece, recognized for innovation and highest level of customer service”, says Filip Weymans, Xeikon’s Director of Segment Marketing Labels & Packaging. “Xeikon is proud that Forlabels, an important player in the labels and packaging industry, appreciates and favors the quality and added value that Xeikon technology brings to the market.”

Forlabels is situated near Athens in Schimatari, Boeotia, where it houses state of the art equipment. The company specializes in self-adhesive labels as well as in flexible packaging for the food, beverages and health, beauty and personal care markets. Celebrating its 28th anniversary last February, Forlabels announced that it increases sales by approximately 15% in 2013, while improving key performance indicators.