The Primera CX1200 / FX1200 Digital Printing System
Scott Pillsbury, President, Rose City Label, “This is a great and established company. My family bought the business in the 1970s. My sister and I came to work here both about the same time, in the early ’90s. We’re getting close to 20 years in the business, and it’s always been a custom label manufacturing company, printing labels for businesses to go on their products for identification and marketing.
We’ve always been a long run, flexographic printer, and that’s still the majority of our work. We’ve brokered some digital work from time to time from other digital printers that had other machines, but having the machine in-house and being able to really learn its capabilities and learn the things that we didn’t know we could do, that’s been a great way to just broaden our product line and really help a lot more customers.”
Whitney Pillsbury, Vice President, Rose City Label, “The size of the press was a good fit for our company and our customers, as well as the price point was excellent. It was something that was affordable for us, and we’d be able to provide a nice addition to customers. Some customers are still using other traditional methods, but this has been an enhancement for the right product as far as short runs.
It seems like we have found our niche in the Primera Press. It was very hands-on. It was user-friendly. We’ve had great backup on it as far as information and troubleshooting. It was just a nice machine to be able to fold into our existing company as well as the experience that our operators have. So it was very hands-on and user-friendly. So it’s been an excellent fit for our company.”
Scott Pillsbury, “The FX, the digital die cutter, was a really huge part of that, not having to deal with custom dies. Again, most of the work that we do is long run, repeat work, and you can go a whole lot faster on a conventional press. So you just bite the bullet and purchase the die. But for short runs, custom shapes, that is a fantastic thing to be able to offer the customers.
You can have any size you want within these parameters. We have 1,000 cutting dies in the building, but inevitably somebody wants something an eighth of an inch bigger or a quarter of an inch smaller, and they’ve got to compromise. With the FX cutting system, they’re not compromising.
As a testament to the Primera machine, we took it out of the box, uncrated it, installed it, and started using it. I think we were printing sellable labels within a week, which probably wouldn’t happen with a conventional press for someone with no training. We’ve got, like I said, very experienced people here, and I elected to use a pre-press person who is a computer and graphic design person to run the press.”
Lisa Helfrich, Art Director, Rose City Label, “It just really allows us to do whatever we want to do because flexo printing, which is what we do normally, has a lot of limitations. So now I don’t have to worry about any limitations, like gradients and colors going out of the spectrum. Sure, they’re gone in the printing, but I get more variety in the color spectrum in the printing with the CX1200.
Before with flexo printing, we have a two day turnaround time for a change because we have to make the physical plate still and that takes five or six hours because the plate has to cure. Now it’s boom, fix it, get it done. It’s done. You just put it back on the press, and we’re ready to go again, which has happened too.
I’d even recommend us having two of them if they keep up this order. It’s just been busy. I’ve been working a lot of overtime since it’s been here, so two would probably be a good idea.”
Scott Pillsbury, “I can tell you the machine has been busy. There’s no shortage of demand, and like I said, I think we’re pricing the products competitively, but we’re making money. So if we haven’t paid for the machine yet, we’re real close.”
