BLANTYRE-based print and packaging specialist Gavin Watson Ltd has launched a new on-demand digital packaging service with the installation of an HP Indigo 35K digital press.
The firm can now make short and ultra-short-run packaging commercially viable for emerging and challenger brands, removing the need to commit to the minimum order quantities traditionally required to achieve a competitive unit price.
Building on its existing HP Indigo 6900, the investment is tipped to provide Gavin Watson Ltd with the opportunity to challenge established buying and production models in the short-run market.
Tom Brown, CEO of Gavin Watson Ltd, said, “Growing brands shouldn’t have to compromise between exceptional packaging and ordering more than they need. By combining HP Indigo technology with our packaging expertise, we offer a more agile approach to short-run packaging, delivering premium quality, faster turnaround times and the flexibility to produce personalised, on-demand packaging.
“With the HP Indigo 35K, we can bring this proposition to emerging brands in commercially viable quantities, helping them create packaging that gets noticed and makes a lasting impression.”
The installation comes as Gavin Watson Ltd sees demand for short-run carton packaging accelerating. Brands are described as launching products faster, managing more SKUs, and responding to increasingly compressed consumer and social-media-driven cycles, creating demand for shorter lead times and greater creative agility.
The HP Indigo 35K enables the company to respond with prototypes, multiple design versions, and personalised applications, while reduced make-ready times allow more unique jobs to be produced per shift. The move is also building new expertise across the business, with employees developing skills in colour management, variable data printing, workflow automation, and digital press operation, and production and design teams collaborating on packaging concepts that were more difficult to execute conventionally.
Producing to demand also supports sustainability ambitions by helping customers reduce excess inventory and overproduction, as well as the risk of unused packaging becoming obsolete when products or designs change.
Jack North, UK&I HP Indigo packaging sales, added, “Packaging needs to move at the speed of the brands it represents. A product can launch, build an audience, and evolve in a matter of weeks, yet traditional packaging economics can still lock businesses into quantities and timelines that don’t reflect that reality. With the HP Indigo 35K, Gavin Watson Ltd is closing that gap – enabling brands to think smaller in quantity, faster in execution, and bigger in creativity. That is where digital print can fundamentally change the economics of packaging.”
