Mr Patrick Wack, Managing Director 5Sept Étiquette: “Integrating the Colorsat Match with our MIS enabled us to develop a ‘digital flexo work-flow’”

With over 50 staff, 5Sept Étiquette (Courthézon, France) provides high-end self-adhesive labels to France’s cosmetics, food, wine, spirits and industrial sectors. To deliver the precision quality and complexity expected by the major brand-owners and retailers, the firm has two flexo Nilpeter FA4s and three Codimag VIVA 340 offset presses, complete with finishing techniques such as screen and hotfoil.

However, service expectations were changing: customers began ordering shorter quantities, usually between 2000m and 4,000m, more frequently and sometimes with just a day’s notice. To maintain quality consistency and prepare colours ‘on demand’ without remakes, the company automated its ink logistics, investing in a Colorsat® Match gravimetric dispenser with Ink Management Software (IMS) from GSE Dispensing. Suitable for gravure and screen inks as well as flexo, the Match mixes and dispenses recipes in batches of 1 to 5 kg, making it ideal for most label print runs. It holds up to 20 components and uses air-driven diaphragm pumps with circulation units to deliver ink dosages accurate to one gramme.

The Match can boost yields by up to 30 percent, dispensing exact amounts needed for each job to precise colour requirements and calculating excess ‘press return’ inks into new recipes. It simplifies the space for ink stocks, cleaning up the workflow.

5Sept’s new recipes are developed with a spectrophotometer and formulation software, then exported to GSE’s IMS software, whose database stores ink recipe formulations and interacts with IT management software from the Belgian company CERM. Ink requirements are exported to the IMS at order entry stage. CERM software calculates the number of labels and instructs the GSE software on the recipe and quantity needed. IMS calculates the base inks needed and dispenses. Returned ink information is exported to CERM’s software, giving operators a real-time view of ink costs per order and recipe availability, to enable Quick Response Manufacturing.

5Sept Étiquette’s managing director Patrick Wack says: “We are developing what we think is a very interesting ‘digital flexo work-flow’, working on the creation of a colour database and the connection of this database with our MIS and prepress system. The GSE system’s ease of connection with the CERM IT software was an important selling point. The two software platforms have enabled us to accurately work out the ink costs per job, giving us greater control of our prepress budget.”