MERITAGE SPECIALTY PACKAGING LTD.    Jay Tapp - CEO    Dawne Tapp - President

The owners of Meritage are Jay & Dawne Tapp & family, plus senior management. Meritage Specialty Packaging was created in 2006 to bring together a Blend of the Best: packaging technology (printing & finishing) and the best people (talent). There are 20 employees, with one manufacturing location in Surrey, BC (near Vancouver) and two sales offices located in Santa Rosa, CA & Salem, OR. Established in 2006, Meritage’s new digital manufacturing operation opened its doors in August 2011. The manufacturing model went ‘live’ in November 2011.

Meritage specializes in high value added packaging, specifically labels, tags and wraps. Its markets include Wine & Spirits, Cosmetics, and Gourmet Foods as well as Security & Anti-Counterfeiting, Tracing & Tracking, and Interactive Marketing (‘smart labels’). Meritage designs and builds its own proprietary finishing lines featuring foil stamping, embossing, security & anti-counterfeiting applications.

The primary geographical focus is the USA West Coast & Canada, but Meritage also has clients in major wine growing areas such as South Africa & Australia, and spirits clients in the Caribbean & Central America.

A little history: In 2008 Meritage began discussions with Xeikon after completing a meticulous and thorough analysis of the current state of the digital printing industry.

Jay Tapp, very familiar and experienced with all traditional printing processes, was one of the pioneers of UV Waterless printing (1993) and an early adopter of digital printing early in the millennium (2003). It had been obvious to him for some time that what was needed was a dramatically different organizational model - one that was specifically dedicated to advancing a digital platform at the highest valued added end of the market.

The print industry was becoming more and more focused on the development of the next generations of digital printing, but the Xeikon 3500 stood out with it’s markedly higher resolution, brand new revolutionary toner formulation, and tremendous horsepower and brainpower in the front-end file & image management software. Xeikon was looking very hard at the packaging market as the next direct mail, and wanted to significantly increase their penetration within the label industry.

The Xeikon/Meritage collaboration: In the fall of 2011 the first Xeikon 3500 was installed in North America. Its capability of 240-line screen-printing at 1200 x 3600 dpi met Meritage’s demanding graphic reproduction quality standard. Not only would Meritage be the first to put the Xeikon 3500 into production, but Xeikon and Meritage also agreed to collaborate on the continued development of the technology. Meritage’s goal was to use the Xeikon 3500 as its only prime printing technology and to combine the Xeikon print with its proprietary Digitt Decorating System. The objective of a 100% digital printing and finishing environment with a very broad range of high-end capabilities, dedicated to packaging and labels, was being realized.

Xeikon + Digitt Technology – A Perfect Team

In 2004 Dawne came up with the name ‘Digitt’ which was trademarked for use by Meritage for its own packaging equipment development. Today the Digitt Decorating System (DDS) is a reality and the company’s first custom engineered finishing line is operating daily. The DDS/version 1.0 is the most productive and effective digital decorating system available anywhere in the world today and is the backbone of Meritage’s value added finishing capabilities. It includes foil stamping & embossing (40 ton); clear build varnishes; RFID insetting; variable & random graphics; coating and die cutting.

Other unique elements in Meritage’s finishing line-up are the Xeikon X-800 Voyageur workflow software, CNC die making and ORIS Press Matcher Color Management. The combination of Xeikon plus Digitt provides the platform that Meritage will use to capture a significant market share of the premium value added label market.

Key Features of Xeikon + Digitt Technology

• 30% less cost/unit then traditional flexo/offset due to less waste and processing time
• far superior quality to the standard earlier ‘digital’ offerings
• highest resolution digital printing currently available (240 line screen)
• print can be immediately finished without intermediate processing or curing/drying time
• maximum flexibility for finishing/decorating

Key Benefits of Manufacturing Model

• extremely flexible & capable of making any kind of label (many additional features built in...security, tracing & tracking, anti-counterfeiting)
• small footprint (one third of traditional PS label plants)• very scalable capacity without adding overhead
• ‘clone’-able in whole or in stages
• easily integrated into an existing printing operation
• modular and upgradeable

The Xeikon bonus: Meritage can facilitate any traditional or digitally printed label job and, in most cases, produce a superior result. There was a learning curve in the optimization of the print quality on a wide variety of substrates, and in the management of multiple (daily) stock changes.

Generally speaking, the type of finishing equipment required to accommodate digital packaging/label jobs is determined by the kind of products to be made. The follow-up would be the development of a customized finishing line that would match capacity to the Xeikon 3500.

Media & substrates: The clients and their label designers will choose the media (face stock) they wish to use. Meritage needs to be able to print on anything without pre-treatment...the Xeikon is very flexible on the vast majority of substrates.

Goal: Meritage is re-defining Digital printing in the packaging segment. It is not ‘only’ for average quality short runs anymore. At Meritage, digital printing using the Xeikon 3500 is the pinnacle of on-demand graphic reproduction available anywhere in the world today. Xeikon & Meritage have put digital printing on a level playing field alongside any other printing process.

Constant color matching and color management, in general, characterizes our packaging workflow. In most cases we are taking designs conceived in spot or special colors and converting them to four-color process colors.

Why Digital? Frequently our customers cannot immediately believe that our samples are printed on a digital press. “This looks like high resolution offset” is a common observation. Once they actually see the press in operation they not only become believers, but advocates. The color saturation and reproduction is superb and consistent. The waste reduction is so dramatic that clients immediately realize this as a factor in facilitating how quickly we get to an approved label sign off. Jay Tapp: “The Xeikon 3500 is the platinum standard for digital printing quality today.”

Customer influence: In a way the customer has driven every investment by Meritage. Dawne Tapp: “Our goal is to say ‘Yes!’ to the project, make it a positive & seamless experience, and achieve a ‘two thumbs up’ end result.”

85% of our jobs are foil stamped and embossed.

Issues/Challenges: Most digital printing workflows are not robust or accurate enough to take on large traditional offset and flexo printers. Meritage’s operation features equipment and processes that can meet or surpass these technologies. Frequently clients are now specifying interactive and random/variable graphic elements. We can incorporate these into any design without adding significant cost or time to the process.

Collaborative outcome: We have achieved very rapid penetration of our primary target markets.

Successes: We have a production workflow that operates with 90% less waste than traditional printing shops. This means far lower costs and therefore automatic savings for our clients.

Going Live - Platinum

www.meritagespecialty.com

ENVIRONMENTAL CHARTER

When implementing new technologies or materials, Meritage takes key environmental issues into account. Meritage is eco-friendly through and through. 

Here are our primary eco-objectives and eco-goals:

• The Eco-Digital principle. ‘Print only what you need, reprint when needed’ reducing waste through minimal production, downsizing storage space and thus decreasing costs. Our manufacturing operation is about 1/5^th the size of traditional printing plants with the same capacity.
  
  
• Eco-Objectives. Reducing the recycling cost of Meritage products and solutions, meeting environment related product standards and customer requirements and minimizing the environmental impact during product life cycle are Meritage’s eco-goals.
  
  
• Eco-Design. Meritage aims to attain its eco-objectives through raw material substitution or reduction, process efficiency improvement and energy usage, as well as life cycle and product disposal optimization.
  
  
• Digital printing versus offset/flexo. Digital printing guarantees a significant reduction in raw materials as well as energy and water savings. What’s more…
  
  
• Xeikon Eco-toner. Meritage exclusively uses the Xeikon digital printing process. It doesn’t cause water pollution and enables easy paper recycling thanks to its ‘easily de-inkable’ toner.

www.meritagespecialty.com

COLOR MANAGEMENT

Utilizing the experience of our in-house team of color experts, combined with our world-class color management systems, we can precisely match to scientifically certified color standards, ensuring our customers receive the most predictable and repeatable color on the market.

DELTA - E CONTROL

Delta E measures the difference or "distance" between two color values. Simply put, the lower the number, the better. We maintain a maximum tolerance of 2.5 Delta E 2000 measured against the latest GRACoL® standard, as well as our own personalized internal color standards for jobs that require even more precise color matching.

THE END PRODUCT

In addition, our Xeikon coated Pantone© color library has been certified by Pantone©, allowing our customer to feel confident in our spot and specialty color matching capabilities. Through each of these processes, we offer our customers industry leading quality expected of a world-class specialty packaging company.

It's time to get real.

http://www.meritagespecialty.com/color/

Xeikon 3500 Testimonial:

Meritage Specialty Packaging Ltd. offers comprehensive, value-added printing and packaging solutions, as well as a full-range of printing, decorating and specialized finishing. We provide customized and sustainable value-added systems, with a close watch on maximizing cost opportunities.

We focus on a complete range of printing and packaging components for the luxury goods sector. Our diverse expertise includes all forms of printing and decorating, as well as structural container enclosure design & manufacturing and dimensional engineering. Our key luxury markets include wine and spirits, cosmetics and beauty, entertainment and fashion retail, and unique types of associated up-market collateral marketing materials.

“Our goal is to always be on the absolute leading edge of visual packaging technologies and to provide graphic designers with new and unique ways to build highly differentiated brand packaging for their clients. We listen to what graphic designers tell us they want, and aim for technical innovations that will knock their socks off,” stated Jay Tapp, CEO of Meritage.

We manufacture the highest quality pressure sensitive & wet glue labels as well as highly decorated and variable imaged tags, cartons, sleeves and collateral marketing materials. Superior color reproductions with intense decorating treatments in exact register are hallmarks of our work.

What attracted us to the Xeikon 3500 were its format flexibility/width, high productivity and 1200dpi imaging quality. The exceptional color and registration accuracy of the Xeikon were key deciding factors. Other benefits include imbedded anti-counterfeiting systems that can be customized for each client.

“In today’s tough economy, the last thing our customers want to worry about is having their hard won brand integrity counterfeited,” commented Dawne Tapp, President of Meritage. “We can provide them with fabulous looking graphics and decorating as well as peace of mind, in that their label or package is genuine. We provide security throughout the manufacturing cycle with a closed loop ‘chain of ownership’ environment.”

All these capabilities were essential components of the digital printing system we wanted to utilize to produce wine labels, cosmetic displays and fashion tags, as well as our proprietary packaging applications. In addition, we strongly believe in minimizing our carbon footprint. The Xeikon 3500 excels in this area as it is an eco-friendly press and does not emit any hazardous chemicals.

We consider the Xeikon 3500 to be an ideal combination of high productivity, industry-leading imaging quality and functional technologies that continue to evolve. With most other technologies, you are faced with choosing one over the other. With the Xeikon 3500 we can get the best of both worlds. We are proud of our partnership with Xeikon and very keen to be working with leading brand-packaging designers to push the limits in color reproduction and decorating enhancements.

The Xeikon 3500 will enable us to further expand our application range and contribute to our customers ongoing success through the commercialization of innovative decorative and functional technologies, providing them with a superior competitive market differentiation opportunity.

If you have any further questions regarding our testimonial for the Xeikon 3500, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Best regards,

Jay & Dawne Tapp
Owners
Meritage Specialty Packaging Ltd.   

Meritage Specialty Packaging has announced the appointment of Gary Cane as Vice President, California Operations, effective immediately. Gary spent the last eight years with Paragon Label and was VP Manufacturing before accepting the newly created position with Meritage Specialty Packaging.

In his new role, Gary will be responsible for business development in California with a specific priority of developing immediate sales opportunities and expanding our network in the wine & spirits, cosmetics and food label industry.

Gary and the Tapp family have a well-established history that goes back to the early 90’s. Gary brings over 15 years of experience in pressure sensitive wine labels, having worked as Production Manager at Tapp Technologies alongside Jay Tapp in the early years of the wine industry’s conversion to pressure sensitive labels.

Gary is very well known in the wine industry and is a seasoned packaging industry executive with extensive experience and knowledge in offset and flexo printing as well as digital printing and all types of finishing processes such as foil stamping and embossing techniques

“I am extremely pleased to be working with Jay & Dawne and the Meritage team. I have worked with many of the key staff previously, and it’s a great group of people!” said Cane. “The world has a way of coming full circle, and now I am excited to lead the implementation of Meritage’s business activities in California.”

“Gary has exactly the type of experience and expertise that will ensure that our new digital printing and decorating platforms are executed and deployed most effectively,” added Dawne Tapp, President of Meritage. “His reputation precedes him, and we are delighted to have him on board.”