Mercian Labels – Business, Open Source & Security Label Printing

As one of the UK’s top label printers, with over 40 years of trading behind us, we are looking for an experienced office based Sales Manager. You will be a charismatic leader, with excellent mentoring skills and a very good IT and customer services background. You will be dealing by email and telephone with a large number of companies, big and small, across the UK and beyond, in order to close sales. At the same time you will be providing inspiration and motivation to a small but committed team of internal sales coordinators, and crucial  feedback to the wider business. You will be given training, and as much decision making responsibility as you can handle comfortably. For more information on our culture and values, please see our corporate website at http://www.mercianlabels.com/careers.php which also describes how to apply.

NO AGENCIES PLEASE

This security label was used by a cruise liner company to seal passengers luggage, and this is how it arrived with the owner. Its not been tampered with, but the poor quality design gives a very strong impresion its been tampered with

A family member recently returned from a caribbean holiday (lucky them!) and showed me this security label that the holiday company had used to seal their luggage as them returned.  Its a pretty basic seal that just uses security cuts to indicate a tamper.  This is not an easy application to tackle, as the range of different materials, fabrics, plastics and metals that are used in luggage (typically quite dirty too!) makes it a challenge for security labelling.  However, we are working on an improved solution for this, and would welcome contact from any users who want a quality solution to sealing luggage, bags and cases.

2D QR Barcode Label used for an intereactive marketing campaign by Pepsi

Whilst out at a trade show today I bought a soft drink with this new marketing campaign on the label.  I dont know if it was printed flexo or digitally, but it was unique enough to get me to use the 2D QR barcode reader on my Nokia e90 mobile phone, which redirected me to a unique website (only viewable on a WAP browser) for this specific marketing campaign.

This sort of application is ideal for digital label printing, and I can see that it wont be long before forward thinking brand owners start approaching us for this sort of campaign with static or variable data.

the sarcmark is a great way to punctuate sarcastic sentances so you protect yourself from misinterpretation

The new sarcmark is the first novel piece of punctuation that I have seen for a long time, and solves a real problem in electronically written english communication, this being trying to use sarcasm without running the risk of offending the recipient who may miss your subtlety.  I like it, and will try to use it, even though its got 3 problems as a concept:

1) its going to take some time to become widely known amongst the population to achieve its purpose.

2) its only being promoted as a “font”for windows and crackberrys.  Not Mac and not Ubuntu or any form of linux as far as I can see from their site.  Thats very clever and forward thinking. It also means that you cannt use it as a font unless everybody has it, typified by the fact that on the advertising websitre the originators cannt use their own product as unless you have the font you cannt see it, so they use a PNG image file of a sarcmark ()  instead.  Thats a rare thing – a vendor who cannt use their own product as nobody else can read it unless you’ve already bought it – catch 22.

3) the originators are trying to patent it and charge $1.99 to download and use it, no doubt with some form of license.  Some on guys, how do you propose to patent a piece of the english language?

Its a great idea, but just cut the commercialism out, open source it, and its use should just explode.

In the meantime, users could use the PNG version of the sarcmark () in html emails and webpages.

box sealing tape marked as "tamper proof"...

Yesterday I received a consignment of low energy GU10  LED light bulbs for home from a supplier sealed with what was labelled as “tamper proof” tape by Haddad Brands.

Oh no it isnt.

removed and reapplied, and you'd never know

I removed it intact in about a minute, and reapplied it the other way around.

Label Lock applied

I then applied a Label Lock security seal  on it

Label Lock removed

and removed it using the same technique I used to defeat the allegedly tamper evident tape.  The result is pretty obvious and the lesson clear.  Dont try and seal your packages and fool people by marking tape as tamper proof when its just not!

reporter breaks unbreakable phone

This video from the BBC Click programme shows a proud CEO demonstrating an “unbreakable” mobile phone to a reporter, and challenging them to break it.  You can guess what happens next – what a nightmare for the company concerned!  Good product though – even it it can be broken with a lot of force.

I bought a new printer cartridge yesterday and it was delivered with a really neat security label on it that looks great, has some good features, but IMHO entirely misses the point.  As you can see from the photo below, it is a branded security label from Samsung that is applied to seal the box closure by the red tab with security cuts as its only tamper evidence mechanism.

Here is a close up of the label in place sealing the box over the blue printed area (see the carton cut being sealed to the right), showing its 2D QR barcode and the colourshift ink (red and yellow overprint)

and the colourshift looked at from a different angle in blue and purple

the problem is that the tamper has a very low level of tamper evident security, and can be removed with ease (but I’m not telling how!).  Here is a picture of the removed label, reapplied a few cms away on the box… not much a seal then.

I then applied one of our dual layer Label Lock security labels (uncustomised version off the shelf) to the place where the Samsung label was. Ok, its a bit big, but makes the point.

I then attacked it in the same way that I removed the Samsung label and it still indicated the tamper as it should do, leaving a big dry peel OPENED message on the box and in the removed label.

and this is the carton opening that the label was supposed to protect.

The lesson here is that you really have to work out in advance what your “security label” is for – is it to prevent counterfeiting (brand protection), and/or prevent tampering of a closure.  This security label is a good brand protection label that is hard to counterfeit that is used to prevent tampering, but dosnt work as a security seal.

We offer selected brands the opportunity to use our latest Label Lock security label technology to secure their product closures with bespoke security labels inclusing colourshift inks, tactile features etc, as well as deter counterfeiting.  Please contact us if you dont want to fall into the same trap!

What treats does 2010 hold ?

Last year I made a bunch of predictions for 2009 – some of which have come true, and others not.  I think I got 1,2,4, and 10 right. 8 is coming with the Google Nexus One phone running Android. The others I got wrong, or show no signs of happening. Hey Ho.

So, here are my 10 predictions for 2010:

1. Sterling will fall below the value of the euro before June 2010 and the FTSE 100 will rise from 5400 to 6000 during 2010
2. The Conservatives will win the 2010 UK general election and instigate big cuts in the public sector
3. Inflation will return in 2010, with the RPI reaching above 4% by December
4. There will be a pile of administrations and pre packs of UK retail business in January and February, and by the autumn of 2010 the banks (assisted by HMRC) will be closing down lots of businesses and crystallising a bunch of loss making liabilities before their year end
5. There will be lots of consolidation in the UK label printing market, with many companies ceasing trading on the back of tighter credit control from the material suppliers linked to 20% material price rises from the devaluing of sterling.
6. The volume of labelling material converted by the UK labelling industry will continue to fall during 2010 as alternative packaging technologies such as shrink sleeves take over in the high volume food and logistic labelling markets.
7. 2D QR barcodes on digital labels will become a standard tool for B2C marketing as smartphone cameras connect to webpages
8. The must have gadgets for xmas 2010 will be a home ADSL based internet TV and recording box and Google will follow their  Nexus One phone with a chrome OS powered tablet PC.
9. Virgin will launch a true 100mbps synchronous SDSL home internet connection with fibre to the house
10. Our Label Lock security labels will continue to find new and interesting markets!

2010 is going to be an exciting year, some great commercial opportunities and we are looking forward to it!

Any comments?

A couple of months ago I started getting into running.  I’ve always found running really boring, even at the gym watching TV, listening to music whilst pounding the pavement, or whatever.  However, I’ve now discovered the secret – podcasts.

Download any podcast on a specialised subject that you enjoy, but dont get time to listen to normally, load it onto your MP3 player, and get out there and enjoy the fresh air whilst losing weight, getting fit and all that good stuff.

To get you started, here are some good podcasts that I regularly download and listen too whilst running:

1. Shot of Jaq -twice weekly 10 minute podcasts on technology from the legendary Jono Bacon + “Aq”
2. Prime Ministers Questions – the UK’ weekly political punchup
3. Small Biz Pod – small business podcast with some very good interviews
4. FLOSS – weekly open source podcast
5. The Naked Scientists – science podcast from some boffins

I’d love to find some more good ones on similar themes – please comment on this post if you can suggest any!

We are now getting close to the end of 2009, which has seen Mercian Labels celebrate 40 years in business  – there arent many things to celebrate in this economic climate and this is one of them!

We are still taking order for dispatch before Christmas, but will shutting down at 5pm Wednesday 23rd December and reopening at 9am on Monday 4th January 2010.

Merry Christmas to all our readers, and thanks to our many clients once again for their business during another successful year.  We have a  special offer planned for January 2010 – I’ll blog about this early in January so watch this space!

Yesterday I found out that the LabelEvent 2010 that I previously blogged about has been cancelled due to lack of support.  This is a great shame as the format promised to be a novel and exciting one.

However, the recession continues to bite deeper, and this event appears to have been a casualty of it.  I hope that the organisers try again in future.

new apple tamper evident security label

Apple have applied for a patent for a new tamper evident security label that will detect if a device has been opened, thus voiding the manufacturer’s warranty.  This has attracted much comment from user groups, with a general acceptance that manufacturers need to protect their warranties, but it does stop people tinkering with their devices.

Its an interesting, if not unsophisticated design compared to the technology we use for our Label Lock range of products and it will be interesting to see if Apple start a trend in using hidden tamper evident labels to detect unauthorised access.  After all – who wants to destroy the famous design appeal of a an ipod !

Watch this space.

I have been using a cowon iaudio iplayer for playing MP3s for some time now, as its the only small mp3 player I could find that mounted natively in linux without special software that needed to be run under WINE or similar.

Today I had a problem whereby after a power cut where the unit was charging and the unmount had not been done “properly”, it refused to mount in any other way but “read only”, and no amount of CHMOD 777 ing would solve it (see this post also).  In the end I found the solution was simple but brutal.

1. copy the SYSTEM directory to a different device over USB
2. reformat using ubuntu linux system>adminitration>disk utility in FAT32
3. copy the directory back and any files you want to listen to
4. it then works.

Ok, you have to recopy all the files back again, and at 15GB capacity thats a few hours of USB transfer, but its the only way I could find.

USB mounting under linux just isnt as forgiving under linux as windows, as I’ve previously blogged abut, and thats a shame.

I’m pretty well travelled with about 40 countries visited over the years, but I’ve never been to such a poor airport as paris charles de gaulle where I have been 3 times in recent weeks.

1. Its got the traffic problem from hell, taking 40 mins for the bus I took to the trade show to even get out of the airport
2. its ugly, and takes for ever to move between gates with everything so far apart
3. the facilities are diabolical – I’m sat at the gate after security and there is no food or drink anywhere, and through most of the airport there are no seats anywhere
4. even the plugs for laptops wont take overseas adapters, its as if the airport has gone out of its way to make life difficult for travellers
5. the wifi is more expensive than switzerland
6. it looks like something designed by overly creative schoolchildren

Suffice to say I will avoid this place in future and recommend others to do so as well!

A classic piece of labelling machinery!

I’m just back from a weeks holiday in Sydney seeing friends, and spent a very pleasurable couple of days in the Hunter Valley wine region.  At the Blueberry Hill vineyard I came across this classic piece of labelling machinery, a beautifully made wooden label applicator. Sometimes its easy to forget just how long labelling has been around!

opusvl is our new open source support provider

Since Senokian Solutions Ltd ceased trading earlier this year we have been in negotiations for a new supplier of open source software support for our systems.  Today we can signed up with Opus VL in Rugby, who we have met and look very capable of meeting our needs.  We look forward to working with the people there.

It wasnt easy finding quality suppliers of open source support in the UK, in fact there appear to be about a handful or less.  Hopefully with the rise and rise of linux, this will change.

the BBC covers the upcoming Karmic Koala release

With the recent release of Windows 7 getting widespread publicity as a half decent replacement for Vista, widely acknowledged to be a failure, its great to see the BBC covering the new Ubuntu release on their homepage yesterday.  You can read all about it here.  I will be using it, and its free, as in speech as well as beer. Give it a go – just download the CD ISO image and try it from your CD drive without it evening touching your hard drive!

YouTube Video of Label Lock Security seals

Label Lock security seals are our flagship product, and we are delighted to lauch this video on YouTube today to showcase the many and varied applications for both low residue and Dual Layer Label Lock security labels.  I hope you enjoy it.

Ginger6.com sell PCs with no operating systesm that work with Ubuntu

My home PC was a 9 year old Dell heavyweight box (1ghtz pentium with 512mb ram running ubuntu 9.04) given to me years ago, and it finally gave up its lust for life recently and started tripping my home electrics.

Looking for a new supplier of a good value linux desktop I initially ordered from Efficient PC, but after some days of no response I cancelled the order by email and bought a custom made box from a local supplier to us, Ginger6 in Wolverhampton.  Of course Dell have now stopped selling ubuntu desktops, and for good value linux preinstalled hardwere there are few options in the uk now.  Looking at the Efficient PC site today they have ceased trading.  Ginger6 duly constructed the machine (entry level intel quad core, 4gb sdramm) in 2 days and shipped it over. I installed Ubuntu 9.04 first time with no hassles (”it just works”) and was up and running in under 30 mins after waiting for the hard drive to format.

I’m really pleased with it, ubuntu runs all 4 processors with no config, and its so much quicker than my old machine, especially when running multiple apps / firefox tabs at the same time.  Thank you again to the community who make such fantastic software available to download for free, and I’m happy to recommend Ginger6 as a good value supplier of PC hardware that works with ubuntu linux straight out of the box.  Now all I have to do is persude them to sell ubuntu preinstalled!

A YouTube video introduction to digital label printing

At Mercian Labels we have been advocates of digital label printing for many years as it offers so many benefits for label users.  We have recently put together this video introduction to digital label printing that shows the process, benefits and finishes you can achieve using digital label printing.

I hope its enoyable and informative to watch – if you like it then please vote for it using  your YouTube account – if you dont like it then please comment below and we’ll see what we can do to improve it.

The labelling industry produces millions of m2 of siliconised label waste like this a year - and we cannt work out a way of re-using it.

As pointed out in a recent blog comment, the Avery Dennision group is to trial the bulk recycling of PET liner from its Fasson brand label stock, the first time I have heard of this type of scheme.  This is a positive step, and I hope that UPM Raflatac and others follow suit.

It is just a shame that its restricted to PET synthetic liner only, as its used in a very small percentage of total label stock (well under 10% if I had to guess).  The big underlying problem remains – recycling siliconised paper liner, and I hope that work continues from the big brands to address this problem.

We at Mercian Labels welcome this as a positive step, but there is a long way to go.  If you are an end user of labels and want to use the scheme, then please email me and I will put you in touch.

A technical post here… this weekend we had a problem where one of the partitions on our zimbra email server reached 100% capacity, and resulted in us doing a hard restart.  As a consequence of this on restart we could not get zimbra MTA to start, the problem being that postfix thought it was already running.  The solution for anyone who finds this is  as follows, pasted to gether from some notes from “Dave”, who fixed it. “The problem was that whenever postfix is started, it runs postalias. Postalias takes files like /etc/aliases and translates them into machine-readable files.  There was an aliases.db file hanging round in /etc, owned by root. When zimbra tried to start up wuth the zimbra id, it couldn’t touch the stale file.  Unfortunately, this hung it rather than erroring out cleanly. I cleaned up the stale files, and started zimbra using root and /etc/init.d/zimbra start. That reset the necesary permissions and recreated the files.”.  I hope this helps if you are a Zimbra user that finds that same problem.

2009 chilli crop

One of the UK’s leading bloggers on open source software, Alan Lord (aka the Open Sourcerer) got me thinking some time ago about growing chilli plants.  Alan has just posted pictures of his 2009 chilli crop, and so I think its only fair that I post mine.  Not quite as impressive, but then again most of my conservatory was taken over with monster tomato plants this summer!  Next year I shall try harder – it was good fun and easy to grow chillis.  This is what they look like all preserved.

preserved chillis for winter curries

If you are intereted in preserving chillis, I’ve followed this recipie (with some additional water).

Label Expo 2009

The blogosphere appears to be without any reviews about Label Expo 2009 in Brussells, the biggest labelling show in the world. Tens of thousands of people go every 2 years, hundreds of stands, millions and millions of pounds/euros/dollars spent and not a single blogger out there reviewing it I can find (at least in english). Bizzare.

So, for anyone who didnt go and is looking for a users opinion of the show, here we go. Its bulleted for my convenience and speed.  Please quickly add your thoughts to the comments once you’ve read it – no registration needed, just type and press!

• it appeared to be a big show, as big as last time, but there was a lot more space in the halls due to halls not being filled with exhibitors, and certainly low number of attendees, certainly on the 2 days I was there.
• This was my 5th Label Expo (01,03,05,07,09) and this time 1.5 days at the show just wasnt enough to have all the quality conversations I wanted to, and I missed out on plenty of casual booth stops that I would have liked to as well .  For next time, I am going to have to stay over for 2 nights and get in 2.5 days.
• I’ve tried driving, flying and training it now, and I can confirm that without a doubt, Eurostar is the best and most convenient way to get to Label Expo from the UK (thanks to Barry D*** for that tip!)
• Exhibitors said it was busy on Wednesday and Thursday, but quieter on Friday and Saturday – indeed many exhibitor reps I wanted to speak to had gone home by Friday lunchtime!  The organisers were likened to Dick Turpin by 2 exhibitors I spoke to  – “highway robbery” was the phrase used  – apparently it isnt cheap to attend this show!
• The main new innovations I saw at the show that were genuinely new were the Holoprint printing technique from Nilpeter and the rush of digital inkjet incarnations all jumping on the Xaar 1001 bandwagon
• I saw some good products that were new to me but already established in the marketplace, mostly in connection with the security labelling part of our business as possible add ons to our Label Lock product range

• There was a small but useful Linkedin.com speed networking session on Saturday organised by Lou at the Linedin Digital Label Printing Group
• Kocker and Beck are moving into to the manufacture of rotary screen units, taking some business from the 2 existing suppliers, Stork and Gallus. Thats an interesting move – maybe rotary screen pricing will come down soon?
• “Lanbel” is a new concept in linerless labels, whereby you supply labels on a slightly offset web with each label sticking to itself.  I novel idea, but I doubt it will catch on.  Yes, it saves the liner, it just looks too unrelaible to use in a production environment

gallus granite press

• The new gallus Granite, made of slabs of granite was a novelty item to me; I just didnt get it.  Why? Why Why?  Apparently they were being sold cheap – 350k euros for a quality 8 colour press which is pretty good, but surely Gallus must be making a big big loss at those rates???
• Cold UV light for ink curing from LED lamps was new and very nice, but at £10k+ per lamp, I’ll give it a miss at the moment.  No doubt it will take over in due course – it looks very good.

there werent amny quality freebies - thank the credit crunch

• The global economic crisis is having its impact on show freebies – the best giveaway I got all show was a plastic packet of plasters from Evonik!
• There were some new high performance chemical resistant thermal transfer labelling solutions that didnt need lamination, using special ribbons and material combinations.
• Whilst there were plenty of people selling standard modular 5+ colour UV flexo presses at the show (yawn…), I think the message had got though that its the speciality machines that make the money, and that end of the market, even in combination presses, is commoditised.
• There was a sad lack of any initiative from any of the raw material substrate suppliers to address the industry wide problem of recycling of label production waste and the recycling of siliconisaed liner.  IMHO the solution to stopping the landfill of the milions of tonnes of this waste every year has to come form the big 2 suppliers (UPM RAFLATAC and AVERY DENNISON groups) and then onto the smaller coaters, Herma, Mactac, Flexcon, Manter, Smith  McLauin etc).  We cannt keep ignoring it, and it needs a concerted effort by the industry to address this.  FINAT, please lead the way – the problem isnt going away!  If one of the suppliers had launched a recycling solution for this, it would have been a complete show stopper.  As it was, the best news I saw on this front was that Calvin Frost from Channelled Resources launched a new European scheme to recycle liner .
• I dont know what happened to the PISEC 2009 move from Athens to Brusells, but it wasnt there.

Comments on the digital labelling developments

Basically there was nothing significantly new from either of the 2 main players in digital labelling (Xeikon and HP), both having put out major developments at DRUPA 2008, Xekion with its 3300 1200dpi fast solution, and HP with its high quality fast WS6000 series digital labelling presses.  There were some new partnerships developing on the software and web 2 print integration sides, but nothing new in terms of kit.  IMHO both these top end solutions are at the same level now; both have very similar quality, both have some advantages and disadvantages over the other, they are priced at different points and each have their own peculiarities, but nothing from any other digital label printer comes close to them at present.

There were lots and lots of new uv inkjet incarnations, all but 1 or 2 based on the xaar 1001 inkjet head.  Some were stand alone machines with no converting, some ran offline converting, some ran inline with full rotary converting, but none I could see ran inline with laser or semi rotary die converting.  The problem is fundamentally that they all suffer from the same problem – the resolution of the xaar 1001 head is only about 600dpi, and compared to either the HP or Xeikon at 1200dpi+, or conventional flexo or letterpress or screen or anything else, its just not as good.  I dont understand why anybody would buy a digital solution now with lots of lines in it from blocked nozzels or whatever, when you can by a xeikon or HP thats much higher quality at not much more money (HP may even give you a free one if you will use enough click charges!).

UV inkjet has a lot going for it, and I expect that it will take over the market for digital label printing at some point soon, but it wasnt LabelExpo 2009, I’m sure of that.  The advocates of full rotary inline converting for digital inkjet are misguided IMHO – I just cannt see why thats a good idea (Stork DSI 4330L, [wrong, edited out 29/9/09 ]  Rapid Machinery Squidjet etc).  Semi rotary or laser is the only way to take full advantage of digital, unless you are printing pre diecut stock (like EFI Jetrion advocate, in which you are really restricted to non bleeding images if you want any decent quality.

The Agfa/Edale digital inkjet press was unusually based on Toshiba TEC inkjet heads

The only non Xaar uv inkjet instalations I saw were from Agfa Dotrix / Edale which was not bad at all, but still not at the Xeikon/HP end of the quality scale, and I think the EFI Jetrion system has its own head system, but again its too narrow and the quality isnt there.

Xaar 1001 printhead

Of all the Xaar 1001 instalations, I thought the Durst quality was the best, but again, you have to be prepared to compromise on quality and productivity compared to Xeikon or HP.

GM had an interesting idea for an inline laser die cutting solution from Spartanics to fit into their existing converting line, but the price was just too high at the moment to launch it.  They also had a small footprint converting solution for offline digital labels, and there were many of these at the show.

There are a growing number of small desktop type short run digital labelling solutions from many different providers (eg Primeria), basically based on a reel to reel A4 laser colour printer or small inkjet system – nice but at £20k ish, and very expensive to run in anything over say 1000 labels, its only good for end users to print very small quantities of the same materials and designs in house, not industrial manufacturers.

Security Labelling

There was a real lack of anything new at the show – the cheap tamper evident materials (mostly from east Asia) I saw were rubbish, even the stand exhibitors couldn’t get many of them to work properly.

The Nilpeter Holoprint system is clever and effective

The exception was the new Holoprint technology from Nilpeter, arguably the premier brand in narrow web machinery.  Their system involves printing a 50,000dpi holographic image in register and inside a varnish with no foil, using a new printing system they have patented (read the patent here). It could be classed as a brand new printing technique, along with gravure, flexography,offset, letterpress, hotfoil, intaglio etc – really a combination of flexo and direct gravure. Very clever, impressive and cost effective to run I imagine.  I hesitate to guess how much it would cost to install though!

The Holoprint images are very good quality, unlike my photos!

Basically it works by flexo printing a UV varnish onto a web which is then embossed by a special plastic PDMS rubber shim that crucially can transmit highly focussed UV light so it is partially cured (or “set”) under the shim that embosses the hologrphic image into the varnish, which is then followed by a post cure.  Hats off to the guys who thought of that!

Conclusion

• A good show, too much “me too” in respect of traditional flexo offerings, and not enough innovation.
• Anybody who can crack 1200dpi, 20m/min+,250mm web+ narrow web UV inkjet will make a fortune.
• Belgian beer is excellent!

Leffe beer

Disclosure

I am the MD of a UK label printing company (Mercian Labels), we are are a Xeikon user, and these views are from the perspective of a label printer with interests in digital, flexo and security label printing – it is not an all encompassing independent review – if you want one, go to a journalist!)

Please now comment!

A reminder to please quickly add your thoughts to the comments once you’ve got this far – no registration needed, just type and press – opinions about anything very welcome, and unless your post is offensive I will publish it and share your views and get some debate going.

Label Lock is growing and we are now hiring

Our Label Lock security labelling product range  is really taking off, and we need an Export Sales Coordinator to help us manage this growth.  Please contact us if you are interested in this exciting role (no agencies please!).

We have been identified as one of the top 5 worldwide bloggers in labelling by the industry publication Label and Narrow Web.  Read about it here and thanks to Peter Renton for the recognition.

Low residue Label Locks used for the DfT SDoC regulations to seal vehicles carrying "known cargo"

Our low residue Label Lock tamper evident security labels have found some really interesting applications since they were launched last year, and they are now proving to be perfect for companies transporting “known cargo” to airports and needing to comply with the DfT SDoC regulations that came into force on 1 September 2009.

If you are a freight company looking to seal panel vans or other vehicles without welding on D rings for plastic pull tie seals then our large low residue Label Lock seals (available with and without counterparts) are ideal.  They come complete with special storage boxes (ideal for the cab!) and ultra secure subsurface unique numbering as standard.

Mercian Labels are recruiting for 1 role, and also offering 2 graduate internships under the new West Midlands Graduate Internships scheme.

The new position is an ‘apprentice’ type job in our factory in Cannock, learning all about our production and industry from grass roots levels.

We are also offering 2 graduate internships: in IT (open source / zimbra / PHP development) and marketing (B2B market segmentation).

Please let me know if you are interested in these roles.

Label Lock™ security labels new website

We are really pleased with the overhaul of our  Label Lock™ security labels website showcasing our premium low residue and dual layer security seals that we have designed and developed in recent years, and launched in 2008.  You can check it our here.

I was first introduced to linkedin.com in late 2008, but until recently did not consider social networking sites to be a useful business tool.  However, in respect of linkedin.com I am warming to the concept, and finding it useful.  Not radical, but useful.  It is far away more suitable for professional communication than the dreaded facebook (at which I closed my account sometime ago), and I find Twitter nothing less than trivia.

By far the most useful piece of linkedin.com are its special interest groups, covering many very specialised subjects that previously were hard to network in due purely to geography – face to face meetings cost a lot of money!  In particular some of the labelling and business groups have had some good threads in them recently, and I see this site as taking a long term position as the only social networking site for business.

If you have worked with me in labelling / security seals / business link in the West Midlands then I’d be pleased to hear from you.