Greens Engros’s own label printer saves on resources

A C7500G label printer from Epson gives Danish wholesaler Greens Engros the opportunity to create customised labels within minutes, saving resources and giving greater flexibility for product design.

Greens Engros is a Danish catering business and turnkey supplier of food products to industrial kitchens and restaurants throughout the country. From its central location of Grønttorvet in Valby, Greens Engros supplies fresh produce to high street names such as Lagkagehuset and Meyer's restaurants, or as Karim Sekkal, Brand Manager at Greens Engros, puts it:

"If you have dined at a restaurant in Copenhagen within the last six months, the chances are you have eaten food or drunk juice that is supplied by us."

Change in the law made the difference
Greens Engros sends packets and products filled with chopped vegetables, meat products and, of course, freshly squeezed juice to its many customers every day. Its product labels used to be preordered from an external supplier, but when a change in the law led to a new form of product declaration, the production process had to be rethought.

"We had to throw away our old labels, which was a waste of money and resources. That's why we bought our own label printer from Epson, which lets us print the exact number of labels we need," explains Karim Sekkal, Brand Manager at Greens Engros.

Epson's C7500G label printer is an industrial colour label printer optimised for short production runs of labels, which is perfect for a business the size of Greens Engros, with 150 employees. Having the printer means that Greens Engros no longer has to keep a stock of labels.

"Normally, we would order 500 or 1000 labels at a time from a printer, so if there was anything wrong or a problem arose, we would have to order the same again. Having your own label printer gives immediate savings, and Greens Engros can now print all the labels it needs, whether that's 500, 100 or just 10," says Frank Krüger, Business Manager at Epson.

From idea to print in less than five minutes
Greens Engros still has labels printed externally, but far fewer than previously. Investment in a C7500G has given the business more than just the means to avoid writing off unusable labels; it also opened up new business opportunities.

By having a printer in-house, Greens Engros's graphics department can design a label and send it to be printed quickly and efficiently. That also allows special print runs to be produced.

"It gives us a fantastic degree of flexibility. We can design a graphic and print it onto a label within five minutes. It's so easy to use – we can create a personalised birthday graphic on the morning of an employee's birthday, print off a label and stick it on their juice when we all have breakfast together," says Karim Sekkal.

Customisation on demand
Greens Engros's customers can order unique labels, such as when Lars Løkke's running club ordered specially labelled juices with the club logo on, with the exact number they needed, to the benefit of Greens Engros and the customer.

This is also helpful at Christmas, for example, when special festive labels are printed for juice bottles, or for trade fairs and conferences, when companies can order special products for their stands.

"If we have a customer who comes and asks if we can improve the product declaration, or change the appearance in connection with a special occasion, we can rearrange production very quickly. That degree of flexibility gives us a massive competitive advantage," concludes Karim Sekkal.