Installations News
Summit Print Installs Esko Auto Engine

Summit Print Corporation of Port Coquitlam, BC, has integrated Esko’ Automation Engine software and workflow server for automating and controlling prepress. Housed in a 15,000-square-foot facility, the company is a custom label manufacturer specializing in digital label production as well as various printed packaging, for clients in the craft beer, grocery, cosmetics, sports nutrition, nutraceutical and wine industries.  

Summit Print, which recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary, moved into its newly renovated facility, located on Kebet Way in Port Coquitlam, to have more space for administration and production. The facility offers a new customer resource centre where customers can view product displays that showcase the labels Summit Print has recently created. To support this move, the company has also designed a new logo, Website and building signage.

“The majority of our clients are small and mid-sized companies,” said Ryan Lees, Production Manager at Summit Print. “Periodically we do work for larger companies when the project is very targeted, for example, 5,000 containers for one store.”

Summit Print operates two digital presses: an HP Indigo WS6000 press next to the company’s new HP Indigo WS6600 press. Prior to the implementation of Automation Engine, Summit used the Macintosh OSX file system to hold and store files, relying on a directory that structured files alphabetically. Files were opened and RIPped with HP’s digital front end, which is OEMed from Esko.

“Using the Mac OSX system was tedious and time consuming,” said Lees. “With the number of daily jobs on the rise, the result of short run lengths and new orders, I came to the realization that we would either have to hire more people or invest in new technology… Our prepress team is essentially three people, including myself.”

The MIS interface within Automation Engine works seamlessly, explains Lees, with Summit’s MIS solution from Label Traxx. The data is acquired from the Label Traxx system to automate overall job processing. Jobs and the necessary data, entered into the Label Traxx MIS, are launched through Automation Engine with the workflow automatically pulling the correct files, even if a job has over 100 SKUs. MIS integration with Automation Engine also allows for automated step-and-repeat or imposition to generate gang runs.