AJS Labels have been working with UK cosmetics retailer The Body Shop for more than 15 years, supplying self adhesive labels to meet their precise requirements. The labels designs are vibrant & exciting and require flexo & screen printing of the highest quality.

The Body Shop hosted its own 2012 Supplier Day in London last week, focusing on key challenges and expectations for the future, and re-emphasising its individuality and uniqueness in business.

The Body Shop’s Suppliers Day was hosted by the firm’s operations team and brought together a selection of suppliers from Europe, Asia and North America to engage suppliers with its strategy.

The event brought together existing and potential suppliers from around the globe with the objective to strengthen relationships and to engage suppliers with the company.

The day was a chance for The Body Shop to:

- Explain their strategy for 2012

- Share 2012 challenges & targets

- Reinforce the 5 supplier KPIs (Service level, Quality, Cost efficiency, Sustainability, NPD + Innovation)

The day was opened by Director of Sourcing, Jerome Courtaigne, who welcomed suppliers to the day. This was followed by presentations from key Directors across the company.

The Body Shop, for the first time, incorporated prestigious awards for the best performing suppliers of 2011. Congratulations to toiletry & cosmetics manufacturer & AJS’ customer, LF Beauty who collected the top award for the Best Overall Performance FG Supplier and Pack Supplier.

Three members of the AJS Labels team attended the day: MD Andrew Scrimgeour, Operations Director Phil Smith & BSI Account Manager David Wooster.

“It was an excellent day”, said Andrew. “We now have a much clearer understanding of The Body Shop’s priorities & strategies for 2012.”

“The day was extremely informative and a great way to see so many of our customers under one roof!” commented David.

Phil Smith stressed, “The Directors shared their vision for increased business, centred on support from key suppliers. They emphasised the need for increased performance based on improving speed to market from NPD right through to product delivery. We know what is expected from us & will work hard to achieve this in 2012.”

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AJS Labels attends The Body Shop Suppliers Day

Jayne & Andrew Scrimgeour were very impressed with the advances in technology as seen at the 2011 Brussels Label Expo, and made the decision to reinvest in new self adhesive label printing press. Over the next few weeks MD, Andrew Scrimgeour & Ops Director, Phil Smith, will be visiting short-listed machinery manufacturers across Europe.

Key selection criteria will be:

• Speed of make ready
• Quality of print
• Consistency of print
• Reliability
• After sales service

This will be a big strategic decision for AJS Labels. It will probably put the marker down as to which supplier we partner with over the next 5-10 years. “Total capex & life time costs will be of course critical & are likely to be a competitive area”, commented Andrew. “Last year was very much about ensuring our digital printing capability was the best that anyone could offer. Now, having bedded down this investment, we are ready to take another step forward with our conventional & combination printing.”

AJS Labels has already been recognised as one of the leaders in quality in both conventional label printing & digital label printing, having picked up several industry awards over the last few years.
“Our philosophy is to continually invest & refresh our asset base”, said Ops Director, Phil Smith. “We have an exciting year ahead!”

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AJS Labels to invest in new label printing technology

This success was recognised recently at the 2011 Profit Track Awards. R&R was judged the clear winner having recorded a leap in profits of 210% a year from £1.5 million in 2006 to £43 million in 2009. The league table featured other well-known brands including online card retailer Moonpig.com (No 3), racing team McLaren (No 4) & online bookmaker bet365 (No 13).

In our first year supplying R&R Ice Cream, AJS Labels has delivered more than 50 million labels over approximately 100 different SKU’s.
Quality, customer service and delivery on time and in full, are our priorities and our 2011 OTIF figures for R&R are very encouraging.

No. of labels printed 50,011,000
% of labels rejected 0.03%
OTIF 99.40%

Lynsey Pearson – R&R Supply Chain Co-Ordinator commented, “The team at AJS Labels is excellent, always a pleasure to work with… if only all our suppliers were as reliable and as easy to deal with”

We were very pleased with this feedback & look forward to providing them with an excellent service in 2012.

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AJS Labels’ great performance

Congratulations

 to AJS Labels Sales Director,

Tim Gittings!

Tim is celebrating a significant birthday & we’d all like to send him our very best wishes.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIM!

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Tim has something to celebrate

From 31st October 2011 the EU Directive 2004/27 requires labelling & information for the partially sighted and blind to be provided with medical products. This is now available in the UK as British Standard BS EN 15823:2010 entitled “Packaging – Braille on Packaging for Medicinal Products”. AJS Labels has worked hard to support customers in the pharmaceutical industry in complying with this new directive and in perfecting the printing of Braille labels.

Braille was devised nearly 200 years ago by the blind Frenchman, Louis Braille, who as a small child was blinded in an accident.  The system of raised dots represents letters of the alphabet, numbers and symbols and is used by people who are blind or visually-impaired to read using the sense of touch.

The basic Braille unit is composed of 6 dots spaced around a rectangle. Letters are represented by embossing certain dots while leaving others blank. Braille characters require a fairly large area on the label so descriptions are typically brief.

AJS Labels has carried out extensive trial work with a range of tactile varnishes to achieve these defined dots. The Braille labels are applied to glass bottles that rub together during packing and transit. It is vital that the Braille dots are very robust in order to withstand this and to ensure they reach the customer in perfect condition. We have achieved excellent durability of dot on all types of substrates.

Braille is screen printed under critical machine conditions in terms of speed and lamp settings. Stringent quality checks are vital throughout the whole process. We are now in a very confident position to produce Braille labels of the highest standard and have pushed this technology across a range of labels including the advanced peel & read labels.

To find out more about Braille labels please contact Chris Green.

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Braille labels. AJS helps pharmaceutical industry meet new regs

Fantastic news for the west Suusex based printing company! On the 16th of November AJS Labels was crowned SME of the Year at this year’s UK Packaging News Awards. The celebration took place at the London Hilton Park Lane Hotel with more than 600 people from various UK print & packaging companies. SME of the Year was one of the most prestigious awards amongst the 20 categories.

We would like to congratulate to all members of AJS staff team and say a big thank you for their hard work and commitment this year! Well done everybody!

You can find out more about the awards, winners or to see more photos from the night on Packaging News website.

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Printing company crowned SME of the Year

Lush is a cosmetics company that produces handmade products from fresh, organic ingredients. The company is passionate about its values and stresses that all ingredients are vegetarian and come from companies that do not commission testing on animals.

The company was founded in 1994 in Poole, Dorset and initially supplied to other cosmetic companies including The Body Shop. Lush has seen rapid growth in recent years with over 600 stores in 43 countries around the world.

Lush’s extensive products range from hair, face, body, and foot care, all the way to bath and shower care. The company is committed to reducing packaging waste and encourages staff and customers to use their own bags when ever possible.

AJS Labels has been working with Lush for a number of years to service their labelling needs. Traditional printing methods are unable to meet the huge number of sorts, ingredient changes and new products that the toiletry company demands. A typical order of more than 1m labels can include up to 400 different sorts in batches of anything from 500 to 25,000 labels.

Digital printing provides the perfect answer. With no plates required and virtually no make ready, it offers the only cost effective method of producing such a complex order. Other market factors come into play when considering digital labels production. Many consumer product companies are driving to keep stocks down, so run lengths are shorter and often more frequent. What’s more global SKUs and the requirement for multiple language options is becoming a major consideration.

AJS Labels has recently installed the latest HP Indigo WS6000 Digital press with speeds of up to 60m per minute across a range of substrates. The machine is proving to be a fantastic investment and has increased the company’s digital labels capacity by over 200%.

With approximately 25% of the line-up changing annually, this extra capacity will be invaluable!

To find out more about digital printing give us a call on 01903 731 212 and our award winning customer service team will be happy to help.

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Advanced and Agile that’s Digital Printing

“It has been a busy year of investment for AJS Labels but one that has seen no drop in the exceptional labels work for which it has become renowned,” said PrintWeek editor Daryl Danielli. We’re passionate about the quality of our labels and always aim for the very highest achievable. This was reflected in the comments made by the team of 28 judges which talked of “exceptional quality” and”stand-out pieces”.

All of the AJS staff were encouraged to enter a draw to see who travelled to up to London for the event. AJS’ owners, Andrew and Jayne Scrimgeour, picked six names out of a hat to take to the glittering ceremony at The Grosvenor Hotel. “This award was very much a team effort’, said Jayne, ‘so we wanted to share the occasions with the people who made it happen”.

AJS Account Manager, Chris Green was delighted to attend.”It was a really great night and good to be there to collect the Label Printer of the Year award. We’ve work hard this year in every area of the business so this is something we can be very proud of”.

The company are finalists in the Packaging News UK Packaging Award for SME of the Year 2011, later this year.

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AJS Labels crowned Label Printer of the Year 2011

It’s encouraging that the number of Apprenticeships is continuing to grow, with the Government increasing funding and support through the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) – to enable an additional 75,000 new Apprenticeship starts per year, from now until September 2013. This is particularly good news as over 200,000 youngsters failed to get a place at university this summer and our increasingly ageing population with core industry skills and valuable experience continue to leave the workforce, reflects Chris Jones, CEO and Director General, City & Guilds.

Disappointing then that the print industry is so poorly represented as reported by Terry Watts, chief executive of Proskills, the Sector Skills Council for the Process and Manufacturing Industries.

Self-adhesive print company, AJS Labels, has a history of employing young people to join their Apprenticeship scheme with excellent results. “Young people are very much a part of the AJS philosophy,” said Operations Director Phil Smith. “They come with a great deal of energy, commitment and enthusiasm for the print industry so it’s great to be able to positively harness this”.

We work with the BPIF to offer a two-year course culminating in a City and Guilds certificate in Digital Print, Print or Print Finishing. All the trainees are given experience in a wide range of departments to help them fully understand the print process. The days out in college are an excellent way of reinforcing what has been learnt on the shop floor and focusing this learning.

“We’ve had some fantastic apprentices who are beginning to make a very positive contribution to the business”, said AJS Labels Production Manager Martin Birch. “Recently qualified Print Finisher, Jonathan, can now confidently run all of our finishing equipment from the simple blank label machine to the more complex peel and read applicator. He is skilled in operating the full range of Little Book equipment including guillotine, MBO folding and bespoke Sigmatex assembly machine. Apprentice Grant is only part way through his course but is already operating the Nilpeter flexo press and proving to be a very valuable number 2 on top-of-the-range Gallus RCS combination label press”.

Young people come to our print company without any baggage! They have not been influenced by other industry habits, practices or procedures and so present a clean slate. Their youthful enthusiasm for learning is very refreshing. What’s more the younger generation has grown up in a technologically-driven, fast-moving society. They are flexible, adaptable and embrace change. As a print company we need to keep ahead of the game if we are to succeed in this difficult economic period. We must be advanced and agile, capable of moving with the times. Apprentices are helping AJS Labels do just that!

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Apprenticeships have impact on the print company

On Saturday 10th September at 11.45am AJS Labels produced its millionth copy of Little Book. Hurray!

Little Book is a versatile and impressive tool for marketing and promotion. It was invented by Patrick De la Hunty, an entrepreneur who saw a gap in the market for compact folded card communications that people not only want to read but keep hold of to read again and again.

AJS Labels recognised the appeal of the Little Book and now has the sole licence to produce the product on a global basis.

Little Books are not treated in the same way as conventional flat sheet media. The book-like formats rarely end up in a pile of other literature, they are seldom filed out of sight and out of mind; invariably they are kept on the person or on a desk within sight. They continue to work long after conventional literature has been forgotten or binned.

The millionth Little Book came in the middle of an order for PR Company,McKenna Townsend.

To find out more about millionth Little Book go to MDLS Marinas.

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AJS made millionth Little Book!