The Packaging Lab, a new US-based digitally printed packaging film and pouch company, is commencing operations this month with its e-commerce business model fuelled by HP Indigo printing technology.
The greenfield company offers online design and ordering via thepkglab.com. The fully automated, online customer experience at thepkglab.com is powered by HP PrintOS Site Flow and Infigo web-to-print software. Production is put through an HP Indigo 20000 digital press installed at its 15,000 sq ft facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota, creating a finishing line with Karlville Pack Ready lamination, slitting and pouching lines optimised for HP Indigo production.
According to Dan Niblo, CEO at The Packaging Lab and a 30-year packaging industry veteran, the business’ end-to-end automated concept is designed to fulfil the unmet needs of the changing packaging market. Consumers have come to expect almost immediate delivery of their orders via e-commerce. In today’s packaging industry, lead times – even using digital printing – can range from 6-16 weeks.
The Packaging Lab vision is to provide as fast as 24-hour to five-day maximum turnaround, offering a flat fee for design services, and no tooling costs or minimum orders.
‘The new concept will disrupt the industry by allowing customers to design and order custom packaging entirely through an e-commerce platform,’ stated Mr Niblo.
Online design and ordering is powered on thepkglab.com by Infigo Catfish, walking the customer through everything including pricing. Infigo Catfish submits orders to HP PrintOS Site Flow without human intervention via the PrintOS open API. Site Flow automatically batches like-jobs, applies step-and-repeat, adds finishing marks and submits the batched job to the HP Indigo 20000 digital press.
Mr Niblo said, ‘Using PrintOS Site Flow, we can fulfil hundreds or thousands of online orders per day with minimal staff.’
An additional advantage of The Packaging Lab digital model is savings on waste due to flexo minimum order requirements. ‘I could tell you many stories of tens of thousands of dollars of waste due to product change or mistakes using flexo,’ commented Mr Niblo. ‘We won’t have that issue here.’
