PACKAGING MEA EXCLUSIVE
Radiant House Labels Industries is putting digital-flexo hybrid production to the test at the Middle East and Africa’s first Gallus One hybrid installation, recently completing 55 label jobs in a 12-hour shift. Ben Daniel speaks with Managing Director Sayed Shamsuddin and Heidelberg Gulf’s Biju George about the production economics behind the investment — and why combining digital printing, flexo and inline converting could reshape how label converters manage increasingly fragmented job portfolios.
Fifty-five label jobs in a 12-hour shift is an unusual production statistic. For Sharjah-based Radiant House Labels Industries, however, the figure provides an indication of why the company has invested in hybrid label production.
The result was achieved on its recently installed Gallus One hybrid press, a platform combining digital inkjet printing with conventional flexographic processes and inline converting.
For a label industry increasingly required to accommodate shorter runs, more SKUs and faster turnaround alongside established medium- and long-run work, the significance extends beyond press speed. Hybrid production is attempting to remove some of the traditional boundaries between digital and conventional label manufacturing by putting both technologies into a single production line.
Radiant House’s installation is particularly significant regionally: the company says it is the first Gallus One hybrid installation in the Middle East and Africa.
For Sayed Shamsuddin, Managing Director of Radiant House Labels Industries, the investment represents the next stage of a manufacturing business that began with packaging-material trading in 2007.
“We began as Radiant House Trading in 2007, supplying packaging materials, before establishing Al Hadika Self Adhesive Manufacturing in 2014 and Radiant House Labels Industries in 2019. This transition into manufacturing gave us greater control over production, quality, service and costs,” Shamsuddin tells Packaging MEA.
Today, self-adhesive labels form the company’s principal business, alongside wraparound labels, shrink sleeves, tags and specialised applications. Its installed base includes eight- and nine-colour full-servo flexographic presses, digital printing and dedicated converting, finishing and embellishment equipment.
The company supplies customers across FMCG, food and beverage, cosmetics, lubricants, logistics and industrial markets in the UAE, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Why hybrid rather than another press?
The central consideration behind the Gallus investment was not simply adding another digital printing machine.
Radiant House wanted to consolidate processes that would otherwise require separate production stages.
“We wanted to bring printing, embellishment and converting together in a single pass. The Gallus hybrid platform provided that integrated approach, combining Gallus One digital printing in CMYK plus white with two Gallus Labelmaster flexo units and inline semi-rotary die-cutting. The flexo units also support processes such as varnishing, lamination and foiling,” Shamsuddin says.
“Integrated with Heidelberg’s Prinect workflow, the configuration reduces handling, setup time, makeready waste and intermediate production stages. For us, the investment was therefore not simply about adding digital capacity, but about creating a connected end-to-end production platform that combines the strengths of digital and flexo within one workflow.”
That distinction goes to the heart of the hybrid proposition.
Digital printing can remove plate production and mounting from appropriate jobs and facilitate rapid changeovers between designs. Flexography, meanwhile, remains an established, highly productive process for longer label runs and can provide additional printing and embellishment functions.
A hybrid architecture attempts to deploy those capabilities selectively within the same production route rather than forcing a converter to choose exclusively between digital and flexo.
55 jobs in one shift
Radiant House recently put that proposition into practice when it completed 55 jobs during a 12-hour shift.
Shamsuddin cautions against treating that number as a fixed production benchmark.
“The result reflected a favourable mix of short-run jobs, rapid changeovers and the elimination of plate mounting and conventional flexographic makeready. Output varies according to run length, label size, substrate, colour and finishing requirements,” he explains.
That qualification is important. Jobs per shift alone cannot provide a universal measure of press productivity because a label plant’s output is determined by variables including run length, web width, repeat, substrate, ink coverage, finishing requirements and the number of job changes.
Nevertheless, the figure illustrates one of hybrid production’s most relevant potential advantages: reducing the non-productive time between multiple short jobs.
For a converter handling dozens of orders rather than one long production run, makeready becomes an increasingly important component of manufacturing economics.
Finding the crossover between digital and flexo
Radiant House is not replacing conventional flexography.
Instead, the company is allocating work according to the economics and production requirements of individual jobs.
“Digital is used mainly for runs of 500–1,000 linear metres, where flexo plate and makeready costs can outweigh the order value. Flexo remains central for longer runs, while the hybrid platform combines digital flexibility with flexographic decoration and inline finishing,” Shamsuddin says.
The 500–1,000 linear metre range is Radiant House’s own production crossover, rather than a universal industry threshold. Every converter’s calculation will differ according to plate costs, substrate, ink coverage, press utilisation, labour, finishing, waste and the value of production time.
But the principle is increasingly relevant.
As run lengths become more fragmented, the most economical production technology can change from job to job. The challenge for converters is therefore becoming less about choosing digital or flexo and more about determining where each process creates the greatest value.
Hybrid takes that logic a stage further by allowing the two processes to contribute to the same job.
Digital at the centre, flexo around it
According to Biju George of Heidelberg Gulf, the Gallus One hybrid is based on the Gallus Labelmaster platform and combines digital printing with conventional printing and converting processes.
“Built on the proven Gallus Labelmaster platform, the Gallus One Hybrid Press delivers exceptional productivity, printing at speeds of up to 70 m/min with a native resolution of 1,200 × 1,200 dpi. Advanced automation features including unique ultrasonic printhead cleaning, automatic nozzle compensation, inline inspection, and register control integrated to an Prinect workflow minimize operator intervention while ensuring consistently high print quality,” George says.
“By combining digital printing, workflow, conventional flexographic printing, embellishment, and inline converting from one manufacturer, the Gallus One Hybrid Press provides unmatched flexibility for modern label production. This hybrid approach enables complete label production in a single pass,” he adds.
The technical significance is the integration of processes.
Instead of printing digitally and transferring the web to separate equipment for additional conventional processes and converting, a hybrid configuration can bring multiple operations into one production sequence where the job specification allows.
For converters, fewer intermediate stages can potentially mean less handling, fewer work-in-progress movements and shorter elapsed production times.
Hybrid’s bigger question: productivity, not technology
The future of hybrid label printing is unlikely to be determined simply by whether digital can reproduce flexographic print or whether flexo can compete with digital on shorter runs.
They solve different production problems.
Conventional flexography remains highly relevant where volumes justify plates and makeready and where high production speeds provide favourable unit economics. Digital becomes compelling when job fragmentation, versioning and shorter runs make conventional setup costs disproportionately high.
Hybrid’s opportunity lies between and across those two production environments.
For converters evaluating the technology, this makes the business case highly individual. Average run length, number of SKUs, daily job changes, embellishment requirements, existing press utilisation and the amount of work moving between machines may matter as much as headline press speed.
Radiant House’s experience provides an early regional example.
Its 55-job shift does not suggest that every label converter should move towards hybrid production. It demonstrates something more useful: when the job mix is appropriate, reducing makeready and bringing digital, flexo and converting together can change how productivity itself is measured.
For an MEA label market increasingly serving diversified FMCG portfolios and shorter, more frequent orders alongside established high-volume work, that production flexibility could become increasingly important.
The question for converters may therefore no longer be simply digital versus flexo.
It may increasingly be about how intelligently the two can work together.