Trade printer Guru Labels has installed Australia’s first Grafisk Maskinfabrik (GM) laser die cutter, which the company says will eradicate tooling costs, increase efficiency and achieve fast turnarounds. Guru Labels, which began in 2001 and operates from Tuggerah NSW with 16 employees, says it provides one-stop-shop services, including an online ordering portal, wide format, and LEF small format as well as its roll-to-roll label printing.
Speaking with Australian Printer, Nick Lowe managing director of Guru Labels, says the company needed to upgrade its equipment, and the research phase of selecting which equipment took months landing him in Chicago where he purchased the GM laser die cutter. Lowe says, “We started our scoping process about 18 months ago.
We recognised that we had to do something as the equipment we had needed to be upgraded and if we wanted to have a longer-term footprint, we really needed to make a decision one way or another. “We knew that we definitely needed a new means to produce our labels, we wanted capacity, we wanted quality.
And where we can we wanted to stay on the path of no tooling.” He says tooling is costly – it takes time for it to be made and then sent back to a label maker, so there are a whole lot of delays and costs involved, which the customer has to pay extra for.
Lowe says, “What we are doing at Guru Labels is delivering all of this to our customers fast and without extra cost. The laser die cutter is able to create any shape all we need is a single cut file and we can do it. “For example, if you wanted a cartoon character or even a more complex shape, all the laser die cutter needs are the shape file and it will cut it.
He says often it is not the graphics; often it is the shape of a product that grabs the attention of the consumer. “So we are trying to give our customers a bit more than anyone else with this machine, which can be used to cut 290mm wide and metres long labels,” Lowe says.
“So if you can make a file that shows the outline we can cut it and deliver it to you fast,” Lowe says. Guru Labels recently invested in a Xeikon 3030 which will print the labels for the GM laser die cutter.
