A Burntwood-based company has been recognised as one of the world’s leading self-adhesive label manufacturers after clinching top honours at an international awards ceremony.
Mercian Labels won the Global Team Achievement Award at the Label Industry Global Awards 2023, held in Brussels, recognising its pioneering work in developing an automated finishing line.
The business, which has a 57-strong workforce, triumphed in the highly-contended category that celebrates a new service or working method emphasising innovation, sustainability and team interaction.
Working with supply chain partners, Mercian Labels conceived the idea of a fully automated ‘lights out’ finishing capability back in 2016.
Since then, they have created a core team of industry leading software and hardware innovators to produce ground-breaking, award winning, label production capabilities.
Their new automated workflow uses a customised ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) saving time on the finishing line (up to 74 per cent), reducing waste, accuracy and freeing up experienced operators to undertake other tasks.
Mercian Labels Managing Director Dr Adrian Steele said: “This has been a six-year journey, but the results are outstanding for us as a business, for our customers, for the environment and potentially will revolutionise the whole industry.
“The automated workflow has significantly improved productivity, reduced waste and frees up our team to focus on improvements in other areas.
“Indeed, now the new systems and technologies are happily running on a daily basis, our team are already looking at our next innovation to further protect the environment, improve customer satisfaction and maximise the benefits to our community and the economy.”
The Label Industry Global Awards are held every year and are recognised as the label and packaging printing industry’s highest accolades. They celebrate excellence and innovation and showcase the achievements of organisations that push the boundaries of what is possible.
As well as its core business of designing, printing and finishing self-adhesive labels for more than 9,000 customers worldwide, Mercian Labels also develops and manufactures the LabelLockTM brand of tamper evident security labels and tape, as well as the GammatexTM brand of chemical sterilisation indicator labels.
