Artica combines creativity and quality for Chilean wine

It is rare for L&L to stand outside a label printing factory and mistake it for an elegant town house. But behind the stone façade and wood-paneled door, in the Recoleta neighborhood of Chile’s capital Santiago, lie the country’s largest family-owned label converter and a Xeikon 3300 digital press said to be one of the most productive of its kind in the world.

The appealing aesthetics continue inside. Artica, celebrating its 20th anniversary, is a specialist wine label printer that believes firmly in the artistic importance of its work. ‘We think of ourselves less as a printer and more as an advertising company,’ says operations manager Carlos Agurto. ‘In design, aesthetics are important. We incorporate art in our label production.’ Testament to this are Artica’s countless commendations – it has won Theobaldo de Nigris awards every year from 2004 to 2015 – and even its factory walls, which are replete with beautiful, atmospheric photos taken by Agurto, a former professor of printing, design and photography at the University of Chile. et and digital printing.

The company’s artistic culture is married to one of fierce efficiency and quality. A long-time user of Heidelberg and Gallus offset presses, Artica moved into digital printing with the installation of a Xeikon 3300 in late 2013. Hooked up to Artica’s internally developed workflow software and modified in-house to meet the company’s exacting requirements, the Xeikon 3300 at the Chilean converter is achieving unprecedented levels of productivity.
‘After the installation, we set ourselves the target of increasing the machine’s productivity by 50 percent compared to what Xeikon has told us it could achieve,’ recalls Esteban Fernández, director and general manager. ‘Two months later, we’d increased it by 100 percent. According to Xeikon, ours is one of the most productive machines of its type in the world. No-one – and I mean no-one – can do what we can do with the Xeikon 3300.’