Excel Labels, the MIdlands-based converter established in 1992, has seen a marked increase in production efficiencies following investments in finishing products from AB Graphic International (ABG).

Excel produces labels and tags for nationwide industrial and retail use. A long-standing customer of ABG, having invested in multiple Vectra turret rewinders since 1996, Excel had seen a growth in demand for short-run length label rolls used in portable printers. For example, a regular running job had to be diecut and then finished off-line due to the very short meterage, which made it unsuitable for regular inline turret finishing. As a result, finishing had become manpower intensive, with a typical job taking up to four days to manually slit and re-roll – a task so time consuming it was commercially unviable. 

Following discussions with ABG, Excel Labels purchased a Vectra ECTR 4 spindle turret rewinder, which, for this investment, included an automatic core loading module enabling cores to be positioned automatically and accurately onto the rewind shaft, thereby enabling a fast cycle time that was simply not possible when loading conventionally by hand. The investment resulted in instant efficiency gains across all roll lengths.

“With the new ECTR auto core loader, we are now running the small roll work inline as well,” says Andrew Keatinge, Excel Label’s managing director. “And by doing so, we are achieving a speed of 38 meters a minute per 13-meter cut. The job, which collectively took us five days across two machine processes, now takes just one day processing fully inline. The productivity results are awesome, saving us not only days of intensive manual work but also our sanity.”

Since investing in this Vectra ECTR 4 spindle turret rewinder with the automatic core loading option, Excel has now placed a further order for two more ECTR’s with core loaders and an additional order to retro fit an automatic core loader module onto one of its other eight ABG turrets.