Mercian Labels have been recognised as one of the World’s leading self-adhesive label manufacturers after clinching top honours at the Label Industry Global Awards 2023 held in Brussels.

Our 57 strong team triumphed in the inaugural Global Team Achievement Award, which celebrates a new service or working method emphasising innovation, sustainability and team interaction.

Working with our supply chain partners, Mercian Labels conceived the idea of a fully automated ‘lights out’ finishing capability back in 2016 and have since created a core team of industry leading software and hardware innovators to produce our truly revolutionary, award winning, label production capabilities.

The new automated workflow uses a customised ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system linked to almost every area of the business, enabling the bespoke manufactured finishing line to complete most of it’s set up and job changeover on the fly, using coded instructions printed on the reel in between jobs, and without operator intervention; saving time, reducing waste and freeing up the experienced operator’s time to undertake other tasks. All of which is backed up with full speed automated inspection against a pre-start image, providing 100% accuracy and 100% fulfilment.

To really put the whole workflow and new technology to the test, we ran the same project on two separate occasions, with the new capability seeing production times for 102 types of label being converted into 117,600 labels on 112 rolls, being slashed from just under six hours, to one hour, 46 minutes, saving as much as 74% throughout the whole process.

Dr. Adrian Steele, Mercian Labels’ Managing Director concluded: “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.”

Judged by some of the industry’s most experienced and knowledgeable thought leaders, 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.