Century Printing & Packaging

A 23-year old family owned label printer located in Greer, South Carolina, built their business by providing profitable solutions for their customers. Their production of peel-off labels for newspaper advertising made them one of three major suppliers in North America, according to Century’s COO Neil Waldrop, a Clemson printing program graduate and co-founder of Century with his brother Ben and their father Don Waldrop. The company has added unique solutions to the bottled drinks market since, earning the business of craft breweries from as far away as Asia. Century continues to expand in other areas such as food packaging and flexible packing.

“Significans tailored the technologies we already had to our business process. They streamlined our business by integrating our technologies and our processes to form a more efficient production workflow.”
– Neil Waldrop COO, Century Printing & Packaging

As with most print companies, Century recognized that the trend to shorter run lengths and delivery times presented unique challenges. The challenges required more sophisticated automation solutions to preserve Century’s ability to perform for their clientele. Century invested in software solutions from Hybrid, COMS and Esko to help achieve these goals.

We weren’t maximizing our investment in technology. The multiple software packages lacked the synergy to maximize return on our investment.”
– Neil Waldrop COO, Century Printing & Packaging

Century had plans to increase the capacity of their business through automation. Neil Waldrop felt there was more opportunity from the investments they had made, “we weren’t maximizing our investment in technology”, states Waldrop “the multiple software packages lacked the synergy to maximize return on our investment”. Century then turned to Marc Raad and Significans Automation, a company with the experience and technical expertise to advance the potential of Century’s installed technologies.

Marc Raad notes: “When Significans Automation first met Century they were handicapped by an under-utilized production platform, in short, there were too many touch points. We convinced them to allow us to re-configure their systems to fit their business. This resulted in a sharp increase in pre-press productivity from 10 to 50+ jobs a day with a reduction in labor costs of 40%.”

“Significans tailored the technologies we already had to our business process”, according to Neil Waldrop. “They streamlined our business by integrating our technologies and our processes to form a more efficient production workflow”, he added. This integration allowed Century to increase their in-house plate-making, further reducing their production timetable and expanding their ability to service their growing customer base.

“Significans did more for Century than any other pre-press vendor…”
– Neil Waldrop COO, Century Printing & Packaging

Century Printing & Packaging has enjoyed 2-years of continued growth since Significans integrated their technologies. As such, there was no increased investment in technology, or the need to expand the staff.

“Significans did more for Century than any other pre-press vendor we have done business with, not only did they integrate and streamline our
production they also trained us how to use and manage our technology.” Neil Waldrop went on to say. This allowed Century to develop increased confidence in their ability to apply technological solutions and resulted in the purchase of a digital label press to further expand their product offerings.

“When Significans Automation first met Century they were handicapped by an under-utilized production platform, in short, there were too many touch points.”
– Marc Raad Executive VP, Significans Automation