Apex Labelling has announced both a strategic relationship with Australian company Result Group and the commencement of sales and service supporting Herma labelling heads to the New Zealand market.
The strategic partnership will see Result Group provide sales and support of Apex Labelling equipment in Australia – and vice versa – and Apex managing director Sam Howe says the deal will mean quicker turn-around when it comes to parts and service and, in turn, less downtime for customers waiting. The German-manufactured Herma brand is a world-leading manufacturer of self-adhesive label application systems, and will sit alongside the New Zealand distributorship for Gernep rotary labelling machines, which provide tailor-made solutions for the beverages, foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals and chemical industries.
Howe says the distribution and servicing agreements for Gernep and Herma vastly increases choice for New Zealand product manufacturers. “It could be from small-scale label applicators to million-dollar high speed rotary machines and now we can back that up with the expertise we have in labelling and local service and support, along with spare parts on the shelf here in New Zealand.” The rotary machines are the first such machines Apex has offered to the New Zealand market and Howe says the advantage lies in their speed and ability to cope with the variances in glass bottles and other forms of packaging and containers. “The addition of these two brands further strengthens our position in the New Zealand market and they complement what we are already producing in-house for our current customer base. It expands our product range into the rotary space and everything that entails for the customer in terms of speed, complexity, packaging and label types.
The technology in these systems allows you to cater for varying tolerances in the size of the product being labelled and hold accuracy. It also allows you to do more complex things around orientation, dealing with embossing on bottles and irregular shaped packaging. This can be particularly useful for brands as they try to differentiate their product through packaging.” The addition of the Herma labelling heads will provide Apex with a selection of stand-alone label applicators with superior technology that is affordable, with the potential to integrate the product into its own custom solutions. The Gernep machines also use the Herma heads, and the first of the two companies’ wares to hit the Apex showroom are the new H400 and Basic models, suited to standalone labelling applications across all major manufacturing and industrial sectors. The benefits to users are robustness, reliability, price point affordability and access to the latest technology from Europe, Howe says.
