Leading labelling systems manufacturer, Apex Labelling, will see increased investment under new ownership.

Company founder Phil Etheridge has sold the company to Sam Howe who will become Managing Director and oversee the day to day running of the business, with Etheridge staying on for at least a 12-month hand over period.

Established in 1977, Apex Labelling designs and builds complete labelling solutions for a wide variety of applications. The company is heavily involved in the Apiculture, wine making, breweries and FMCG industries supplying customised labelling solutions to small and large-scale customers.

Howe has a background in automotive engineering and product development in the United Kingdom as well as experience here in New Zealand with Compac Sorting Equipment – a leader in high-speed pack house technology for the fresh produce industry.

Howe says it will be business as usual despite the change in ownership and will look to make significant investment into the company to further increase its market share and to offer a broader range of services to its customers.

“Apex equipment has a reputation for being very reliable, and we absolutely want to continue that,” says Howe.

“In the short term, we’ll be looking to increase investment in R&D and to boost our engineering capacity and resources. While also having more resources on the ground to service our customer base.”

With Apex Labelling systems operational through New Zealand and Australia across a broad spectrum of industries, Howe says the company will embrace more technology to improve efficiency and increase output from customer production lines.

Embracing more advanced technology, Howe says the company will also make further investment into developing vision based orientation capabilities for its systems.

“Customers are increasingly looking to differentiate their products through packaging. By leveraging vision recognition and camera technologies from adjacent industries, Apex is enabling this shift towards more unique and customised packaging.

Orientation capabilities allow the labelling system to identify physical features of an object and position a label accordingly. Brand identity is incredibly important in today’s retail market, so we need to be able to offer technology to facilitate this process.”

Giving customers flexible finance options is also on Howe’s agenda.

“We’re looking to develop a lease model for our labelling systems, which some companies might find more attractive than purchasing outright.”