Recipe for success

When Woolworths of Cape Town, South Africa, launched a new range of cooking oils, dessert sauces, syrups and glazes, Rotolabel produced the labels for the Cooks’ Essentials premium product range on its HP Indigo digital press. The company, also in Cape Town, is a leading South African producer of self-adhesive labels.

"We specialise in high quality label printing,” says Sales Director Grant Watson. “To provide this high-end service, we have a number of letterpress machines and an HP Indigo press ws4500 at our disposal. We purchased the HP Indigo press about four years ago, and Woolworths was just one of the food and wine retailers that were attracted to our new print capabilities.

“The increased quality of our digitally printed labels won us many new customers requiring packaging for premium products, and our HP Indigo press continues to enhance our offering.”

Steve Andrews, Packaging, Design and Planning Manager at Woolworths, adds: “Having worked with Rotolabel before, we knew that they would be ideally suited for this job, and having HP Indigo print capabilities made the decision to place the work with them even easier.”

The Cooks’ Essentials range is aimed at experienced cooks and cooking enthusiasts and, therefore, the packaging design and finished quality of the product needed to attract this semi-professional market with a high-end look and feel.

“To achieve this premium look, one of the features of the new label design was a metallic effect at the bottom of all the labels,” explains Mr Andrews. “Critical to the appearance of the label and, ultimately, the success of the new range, this effect needed to be fresh, clean, balanced and bright. Rotolabel conducted numerous tests to ensure the required result was achieved.”

The HP Indigo press ws4500 uses HP ElectroInk liquid ink technology and a wide colour gamut to provide ‘exceptional and consistent’ print quality. Spot colours can also be printed to ensure that customers’ brand colours are matched and the end result meets the requirements exactly.

“The challenge was to keep the metallic effect consistent across the range of different product labels,” explains Nigel Deary, Creative and Prepress Director of Calibre Brand Solutions, design and prepress agency to Woolworths. “We printed the first run on both the letterpress machines and the ws4500. When we compared the results, the texture in the background differed from one level to the next on the labels printed on the letterpress, but with the digital press, we found we had much better control.

“It was also easier to use the HP Indigo press within our workflow, as it was really quick to set up and guaranteed the same high quality every time we printed something.”

The ws4500 is able to print runs as few as one up to 50,000 labels in a fast turnaround time to enable customers to get their products to market quickly.

Grant Watson confirms: “The cost effective, short run capability of the ws4500 means that we can print what our customers want, when they want it, and we can provide them with proofs that will be identical to the real job and conduct trials prior to production - such as those we did for Woolworths. This has helped Rotolabel stay ahead of the competition.”

“Rotolabel is absolutely committed to honouring the agreed turnaround time when we request a new job,” says Nicki Russell, product developer – groceries, Woolworths. “Often they will even go as far as providing the finished labels a week prior to the deadline, but the quality of the end product will always remain consistently high.”

The Cooks’ Essentials range was launched in stores nationwide and proved to be a great success.

“The range was extremely popular with customers and I believe the packaging design played an important role,” affirms Catherine Bothner, Product Developer – Groceries, Woolworths. “The quality of the packaging and overall appearance of the new products made them stand out as a high-end range and attracted the target audience instantly.”

Grant Watson concludes: “Two years on, we are still printing the labels for Cooks’ Essentials - testament enough to the success of this range. The results we were able to deliver would not have been possible without our HP Indigo press.”