“We were adding SKUs faster than our press crew could change plates,” says Marta Nowak, Production Manager at Bramble & Thyme Preserves in North Yorkshire. “Seasonal runs, private labels, and export variants pushed our label room to the edge.” The team wanted stable color across glass and plastic jars, shorter setups, and a path to variable data without retooling the entire shop. They also wanted to keep the footprint and headcount steady.
Based on a pilot guided by onlinelabels application notes and templates, the team tested hybrid printing—Flexographic Printing for high-coverage brand elements and Digital Printing for variable panels. What followed wasn’t flawless, but it was workable and measurable, which is what Marta cares about most.
Company Overview and History
Bramble & Thyme is a 20-year-old, family-run Food & Beverage business. The core range started with four preserves; today they run 40+ SKUs with seasonal micro-batches and retailer exclusives for the European market. Labels are applied to round jars and short-run squeeze bottles, which means different face stocks and adhesives, plus glass- versus PET-related scuff risks.
They print on paper labelstock with glassine liner for classic jars and PP film for cold-chain SKUs. The traditional look matters—think textured paper and warm inks—so even when the team experiments with embellishments, they tend to keep finishing to varnishing and die-cutting rather than heavy foils. For limited runs like farm-shop mason jar labels, they need fast artwork swaps and predictable adhesion.
“We’re not a mega-plant,” Marta notes. “We run a compact line and rely on clear process windows. That’s why a hybrid approach appealed to us—the flexo unit sets the brand base, the digital unit handles the SKU-by-SKU realities.”
Quality and Consistency Issues
Before the change, Bramble & Thyme battled two issues: color drift on long runs and plate-driven changeover time. The brand’s red, used on lids and labels, wandered by ΔE 3–5 across substrates. On PP film, water-based inks sometimes scuffed during transport. Across weeks, first pass yield sat around 84–86%, and waste hovered at roughly 9–11% on small, changeover-heavy days.
“Variant logic is a quiet killer,” Marta says. “Think of johnnie walker different labels—color cues tell the whole story. In our case, strawberry vs. raspberry has subtle hue differences. When PP, paper, supplier lots, and weather all pile on, color stability goes from ‘nice to have’ to ‘must have.’”
Solution Design and Configuration
The team implemented a hybrid line: a narrow-web flexo unit (UV-LED Ink) lays down solids and brand elements; an inline inkjet module handles variable data and last-minute text edits. Material choices stayed familiar—FSC-certified paper labelstock and PP film—while coatings shifted to a tougher varnish for transport. They tightened color with a Fogra PSD workflow, targeting ΔE ≤ 2.5 for key brand colors and daily on-press verification charts.
They also wanted actionable variable data. “We tested serialized QR for a promotion,” Marta explains. “The landing page carried an onlinelabels coupon code and batch info. Scan rates of 3–5% beat our email-only campaign. It’s not magic; it’s just a printed touchpoint that customers actually see at the shelf and at home.” A remote session with the onlinelabels sanford applications team helped lock down ICC profiles and substrate curves.
Q: Our founder once asked, ‘how to make labels on google docs?’ A: It’s fine for mockups or internal samples. For production, export clean PDFs with bleed, embed fonts, and supply dielines and spot colors. Prepress templates from suppliers save hours, and a 1–2 mm bleed policy avoids edge surprises. We learned this the hard way on a seasonal run that shaved too close to the cut.”
Quantitative Results and Metrics
Six months post-implementation, the numbers stabilized. FPY moved from the mid-80s into the 91–93% range. Waste on changeover-heavy days now sits closer to 6–7%. Average changeover dropped from 42–45 minutes to about 26–30 minutes by parking static elements in flexo and only swapping digital data. Throughput on standard SKUs rose from roughly 8,200 to 9,500–10,000 labels/hour, depending on substrate and varnish.
Color control is tighter: daily checks keep ΔE on primaries at or below 2.5 across paper and PP. Energy use tracked on the line shows a move from ~1.1 kWh per thousand labels to ~0.95 kWh per thousand. Compliance remains aligned with EU 1935/2004 and EU 2023/2006, with material records tied to batch and QR. The team estimates the payback period for the hybrid module at around 12–14 months based on scrap avoidance, time saved, and variable-data jobs captured. “Not perfect,” Marta concludes, “but predictable—and predictable is what lets a small team sleep at night.” She credits the initial templates and remote guidance from onlinelabels for reducing the learning curve.
