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Color Craft Label expands its repertoire beyond pressure-sensitive to contend in shrink-sleeve labels.
Decades ago, Elvis firmly established Memphis, TN, as home to where records and kings are made. David Seuss, W of sales for fourth-generation-owned Color Craft Label Co. (a dynasty in its own right), also in Memphis, has his own hopes and dreams. No more-pleasing music to the ear could be heard than for Color Craft some day to be crowned king of shrink sleeves.
As the firm expands into flexible packaging with its new Comco MSP (multi-substrate press) and Stanford slitter/rewinder, seamer, and inspection/doctor machine, Color Crafts new flexible packaging division is humming right along toward a new destiny, making records of its own.
Established in 1964 as a division of Memphis Engraving with roots back to 1924, Color Craft now has six facilities comprising a total of 110,000 sq ft of manufacturing space. The firm is divided into three business groups: labels and tags; digital printing; and the new 24,000-sq-ft flexible packaging division, formed in 2004 and housing the most recent equipment purchases that Seuss believes will take Color Craft to new heights.
Many in the label converting business have encountered shrinking profit margins, says Seuss, due in part to increasing material costs. Ironically, he sees shrink labels as the industry's savior. "Your stores, your shops, your Wal-Marts dictate packaging, so other people follow along. Various industries, like the dry creamer industry, have gone all shrink sleeve when they used to be litho label," Seuss observes. And other packaged products, he says, are continuing the trend toward unsupported film labeling.
"The 360-degree graphics of shrink sleeve have made a big difference. For just a little bit more than it costs to produce standard pressure-sensitive labels on a press," Seuss says, "you can produce [on the Comco press] a label for the whole container-and you have a lot better look on the shelf." Seuss reveals the company's investment in its flexible packaging division will be the focus for several years to come, although investment in p-s equipment may come as the result of success with shrink-sleeve labels.
All in the Numbers
Another reason for moving toward shrink-sleeve labels is in the numbers, says Seuss. Saturation of the p-s label market,...