The Packaging Lab launches with HP Indigo 20000

Using HP Indigo digital technology, it claims to offer easy online design and ordering with fast turnaround times.

The greenfield company has installed an HP Indigo 20000 digital press at its 15,000 sq ft facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota, creating a finishing line with Karlville Pack Ready lamination, slitting and pouching lines optimized for HP Indigo production.  

The automated online system at thepkglab.com runs HP PrintOS Site Flow and Infigo web to print.

‘The new concept will disrupt the industry by allowing customers to design and order custom packaging entirely through an e-commerce platform,’ said Dan Niblo, CEO at The Packaging Lab.

The Packaging Lab vision is to provide as fast as 24-hour to 5-day maximum turnaround, offering a flat fee for design services, and no tooling costs or minimum orders. Easy online design and ordering will be powered on thepkglab.com by Infigo Catfish, walking the customer through everything including pricing.

Next, Infigo Catfish submits orders to HP PrintOS Site Flow without human intervention via the PrintOS open API.  Site Flow automatically batches jobs, applies step-and-repeat, adds finishing marks and submits the batched job to the HP Indigo 20000 digital press.  

‘Using PrintOS Site Flow, we can fulfill hundreds or thousands of online orders per day with minimal staff,’ Niblo said.

The 30-inch HP Indigo 20000 digital press allows converters to produce flexible packaging applications on film or paper with unlimited variation thanks to the new HP Production Pro for Labels and Packaging  digital front end with multiple RIP instances for variable data and to support for growing SKUs.

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.  We won’t have that issue here,’ said Niblo.