While most people understand how protective winemakers are about their methods and recipes, most would never expect that this secrecy often extends to their label making production as well. Telstar Engineering recently learned that its new client in Perth, Australia, wants to keep its competition guessing in the area of marketing. So while Tom Kirtz, Telstar’s owner and chief engineer, would love to talk about the details of his company’s latest ground-up converting press creation he can only discuss about the equipment and not the stunning labels it produces.

The frame-up construction of this multi-unit converting press for Label Power began with very particular specifications delivered by Geoff Peady, Telstar’s man in the Pacific Basin. The job required the wine labels to be decorated on a second pass with first-pass registration. Furthermore, the décor demanded applications offered only by Telstar from its line-up of retrofit unit capabilities.

Along their way to becoming finished labels, the pre-printed stock undergoes decorating details from four different units built on the custom press chassis. The rotary screen unit features Telstar’s exclusive “Gear Saver” feature to reduce screen replacement costs. Foil can be run either hot or cold. Label power is running cold foil on its press since Telstar has so successfully proven the efficiency and quality of its cold foil applications. A flexo unit and an embossing station round out the decorating, along with die cutting and finishing.

Once the press was complete and had successfully passed in-plant testing, Label Power representatives visited Telstar for a final week-long “prove-in” prior to shipping. According to one of the Australian visitors, “I was impressed with the no-nonsense design; it certainly had the operator in mind, being very user-friendly. The press was particularly impressive second passing a cold foil design with embossing and excellent register control.”

Dan Plash, Telstar’s Sales and Marketing Manager, explained that his company’s mastery of servo controls has greatly improved the ease of operating these highly sophisticated converting presses. “Along with our CAD-to-Go™ engineering to rigid job specifications and our Servo-Genius™ integration, technology is having its full effect on converting press design and function,” he stated. Plash will be on-site in Perth at Label Power for the installation and start-up of the new label press.

While Tom Kirtz is happy to see the production of a new press going on in Telstar’s engineering facility, there is another aspect of this particular sale he doesn’t want to keep secret. “There is so much talk about outsourcing these days. Here we are in Burnsville, Minnesota, with a bunch of skilled press people and machinists and we get to send a press we designed and manufactured all the way to Australia. We think that counts a little bit for our country, but a whole lot for our own people. There’s a lot of pride in that machine and that sale.” Kirtz said.

Telstar Engineering manufactures complete converting presses for the label and
pharmaceutical industries, along with a line of over 38 retrofit options. Retrofits by Telstar
are designed to be fully and easily portable, station-to-station and press-to-press, and will
operate on virtually any model narrow web press. The company’s CAD-to-Go™ on-location
design service applies to both narrow and wide web printing situations.