How Blue Label Packaging Is Building the Lights-Out Label Factory

Andrew opens the conversation with a market read that will resonate with most label producers. After the pandemic highs of 2021 and 2022, the label industry is settling back into its historical growth rate of around 4% per year. It is less exciting than the 20% surges some operators grew accustomed to, but Andrew is clear-eyed about what it means.

Andrew Boyd, President – Blue Label Packaging Company:

“Things are good. The label market is returning to normal after a few very disruptive years. The pandemic, big ups, not as big downs, but just some slower years. But I think we’re seeing demand get through at regular speed. I feel like, even at LabelExpo, purchasing activity is kind of returning to normal at a high level.”

“I think the label industry that we’ve known on average grows about 4% a year. 4% isn’t quite as exciting as 20% that we were seeing in 2021, 2022. So we’re getting used to the norm.”

Douglas Gibson, Founder & CEO – Infigo:

“But stable.”

Andrew Boyd:

“Stable. Exactly.”

Alongside the demand picture, Andrew notes that the labour market has normalised too. A meaningful shift for operators who spent 2021 and 2022 struggling to find and retain staff. But new disruption has arrived in a different form: US tariffs and the supply chain pressures they create.

Andrew Boyd:

“I think with demand normalizing, the labour market is getting back to normal as well. You’re getting a lot of applicants. You’re getting even a few good applicants for every position. And you have good options, and people are interested in sticking around for a career.”

“We’ve got tariffs to deal with. And of course that’s created havoc for many other economies as well. So a new set of supply chain problems. But I think overall, a lot of the supply chain is handling this in a much more measured fashion. I’ve seen people very reluctant to pass costs down to customers. We’ve seen our vendors doing a great job of communicating what’s happening, giving people a heads up, and trying to figure out ways to get through this together.”

When Douglas asks Andrew for advice to share with other label businesses, the answer cuts to the heart of how Blue Label thinks about operations. It is a philosophy about consistent process improvement over immediate returns and one that Andrew has clearly had to trust himself on.

Andrew Boyd:

“Keep automating your processes. Keep looking for opportunities where there’s waste or excessive, non-value-added activities happening such as extra clicks, transposing data. Look at new production processes for non-value-added time. Is this really delivering something the customer needs? Is this overkill? Was this a process put in place for one particular customer, and the other 99% of people don’t need it?”

“The frustrating part — and it’s taken me a long time to understand — is just because you’re doing the right thing today doesn’t mean you’re going to see results today.”

“Over the past few years, you felt like, is all this process improvement leading anywhere? And then as customers come back and volume rises, you find yeah, we’re able to deal with many more orders and not have to add capacity like we might have had to five years ago.”

The conversation turns to how the customer mix is shifting at a SKU level. Andrew’s read on what is driving new label volume is useful context for any label printer thinking about where growth is coming from.

Andrew Boyd:

“We track monetary value per SKU every year. We saw it growing for probably the last five years, where people are printing slightly fewer SKUs because of distribution chain consolidation.”

“Now you’re starting to see a proliferation of small brands. Really Instagram-driven brands. People are curious to try new products, definitely in the health field. Supplements are doing great. There’s a lot of cannabis beverage in the US, it’s really taking off. So we’re starting to see all sorts of new products. What we’re not seeing is traditional brands diversifying into multi-SKU. We’re seeing new launches moving into new SKUs.”

Douglas Gibson:

“And I think as the technology both from an online perspective, Infigo drives online, and from a digital perspective to the finish you guys are just getting leaner in terms of being able to turn that around much quicker.”

This is where the conversation becomes most concrete for label operators. Andrew describes the integration Blue Label Packaging has built between their Infigo web-to-print storefront, CERM MIS, and ABG Connect — and the results it has produced.

Andrew Boyd:

“We have some really exciting projects, one of which is an integration with ABG Connect, which essentially allows our data system, which is CERM, to go directly to the press and send job after job after job without having to manually set anything up. So for tiny jobs, this is huge.”

“What we couldn’t have possibly expected was 20% savings purely on finishing. So if you take that mindset to printing, to how you might rewind and package jobs, there’s a ton of value. Not to mention how you’re consolidating jobs, your e-commerce platform, your order portal, which for us is Infigo. Your ability to really group that effort into value-added processing, not email back and forth 27 times for one quarter. How can the customer self-serve and get something into the system?”

Andrew frames the ambition in terms that any operator will recognise and is honest about where Blue Label sits on that journey.

Andrew Boyd:

“Full automation is a lights-out facility. Someone enters an order online, it travels right through the system. Artwork’s processed, it becomes a live job, job is printed, in the box. No human being ever touches it. That’s the dream.”

“2% of the path, 3% of the way to 100% is certainly better than zero. One of my favourite quotes: “the best time to plant a tree was five years ago. The second best time is now.” So if you feel like you’re late to the e-commerce world. I think what we’ve learned is you’re going to have to start building at some point anyway. And now is probably the time.”

Douglas Gibson:

“So there’s never not a good time.”

Douglas introduces the topic of AI, noting that Infigo has been investing heavily in internal process efficiency. Andrew’s take on where AI is most useful right now is measured, and one of the more practically useful perspectives in the conversation.

Andrew Boyd:

“So many business owners know AI is going to be an important part of who we are in the future. A lot of what we’re talking about — these tasks that are either repetitive or data transcription, or even sorting through our own systems for data we already have — are super helpful with that.”

“One area I’m very interested in is using AI to essentially analyse processes. I sat in a seminar about software that only learns on status changes. It sees how people progress through status ranges, where time is spent, where they skip steps, and it will build you a process map. It’ll show you what steps maybe should be eliminated or are not being adhered to properly. The idea of using AI to tell you where you should be using AI. It’s interesting.”

“For people with small businesses, the ideas of what it can make possible and the resources it can give us are overwhelming. Thinking something small to start with is the way.”

As the conversation draws to a close, Douglas asks Andrew to share his experience of working with Infigo. It is an endorsement grounded in a project that did not go smoothly at every stage, which makes it more credible for that.

Andrew Boyd:

“At Blue Label, what we look for are partners for life. We print with HP, we finish with ABG, we use CERM for our MIS. My philosophy is if we can build deep relationships with our partners, they’re going to understand our requirements. We can also learn from them if we really need the solution?”

“The project of a true link into an MIS was far more extensive than we both could have imagined. But what we ended up with was also a tool far more powerful than we probably initially thought. And that only came from two parties that were willing to listen and repeatedly go back to the drawing board.”

“You don’t always see the results of what you’re working on day to day. With any automation project there are frustrating moments of ‘this isn’t going to play out the way we thought.’ But if you stick with it, you really do end up on the other side with a tool that’s like wow. Now we have a live web call into our MIS. Real pricing data, up to date, to show you the status of orders as it’s actually inside the system. Which for CERM was a big first.”

“We totally recommend Infigo, just because of their ability to listen and figure out where you are and where you want to go.”

What Blue Label Packaging has built is not an out-of-the-box deployment. It is the result of a sustained commitment to connecting the right systems with Infigo for order capture, CERM for job management, ABG for press control, and doing the hard work of making those integrations genuinely useful to operators and customers alike.

For label producers considering the same path, the starting point is an order portal that can connect to the rest of your stack. Infigo’s web-to-print platform is built specifically for label and packaging printers, with native integrations to MIS systems including CERM, and the flexibility to grow as your automation ambitions do.

Explore Infigo’s web-to-print solution for label printers