Opus 21 invests in seaming equipment

The Northumberland-based company, which specialises in labels, short-run mock-ups, cartons and packaging for design agencies, bought the Karlville DigiSleeve Seaming machine the day before Labelexpo officially kicked off.

Opus 21 director and co-founder Mark Hunter Purvis told Packaging News that the deal was “too good to be true” and that the new kit would enable it to keep up with the growing demand for short-run shrink-sleeving.

The company had been potentially looking to buy a DCM machine with an EUR 80,000-90,000 price tag, but decided against it. The Karlville kit cost “a lot less than 80,000″, Hunter Purvis said.

He reckoned that the K1 seamer, which has been running at Opus 21′s Cramlington-based plant since the middle of October, would pay for itself in the next two to two-and-a-half years at the firm’s “existing level” of business. However, Hunter Purvis is anticipating an upsurge in revenues thanks a burgeoning market for mock-ups.

The new kit will enable Opus 21 to improve costs and turnaround times, thus further boosting revenue. Hunter Purvis also said that the firm had picked up a “couple of new clients” at Labelexpo in September, including Coca-Cola.

Demand for in the packaging mock-up market is increasing because more clients are “wanting sales samples,” he said. “[Companies] want to see a shelf full of product and a lot more people are looking for mock-ups and giving them to sales people.”

Coca-Cola itself has commissioned Opus 21 to create personalised sleeves sporting individuals’ names, which it intends to give away at various conferences and events.

Hunter Purvis said: “We can now off the full service for anyone with a requirement for short-run shrink sleeves, as we can print up to six colours on our web-fed off-set digital press, weld the sleeves in-house using the world’s first K1 seamer and then shrink the sleeve onto the product using our heat tunnel.”

Labelexpo 2009 took place between 23 and 26 September at Brussels Expo.

Opus 21 was set up in November 2006 by directors Hunter Purvis, Peter Chapman and Adrian Howe. In September 2006 it made it first investment of around £160,000 in an HP Indigo ws2000.

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