BGM — New Ownership, Same Identity · Adam James
A year after becoming part of Duplo, BGM is entering a new phase — but Managing Director Adam James is clear about one thing: BGM will remain BGM.
At Labelexpo Americas in Chicago, Wayne Beckett catches up with Adam James to discuss the acquisition, what being part of a larger organization means for BGM, and why the company continues to operate as a separate roll-fed specialist rather than simply becoming part of the Duplo product portfolio.
With US distributor J&J representing BGM for around 20 years, the company is showing three very different solutions: the high-speed 450i label inspection slitter rewinder, the 370 EDSRT blank-label die-cutting system, and BGM’s new compact digital finishing solution for varnishing, laminating, die-cutting, stripping, slitting, and rewinding in one pass.
But machinery is only part of the conversation.
Automation and production data are becoming increasingly important, and BGM is working to make machine information accessible in MIS environments — helping converters better understand productivity, machine performance, setup times, and even where additional operator training could improve output.
The Duplo acquisition also gives BGM something important: the ability to think in the long term.
Rather than chasing dramatic growth overnight, Adam James talks about organic development, greater security, and planning 10, 15, and even 20 years ahead. Part of that strategy will be simplifying BGM’s extensive product portfolio, making it easier for customers to identify the core machine they need and then configure it with the appropriate options.
Global domination?
Maybe eventually.
But apparently not within the next 12 months.
No Data Found.
Content for this section will appear here once available
Wed September 16th
SCREEN + LabelHub — The Press Is Only Part ...
Buying a digital press used to be mostly about speed, resolution, quality, and productivity. That is changing. At Labelexpo Americas in Chicago, Morten B. Reitoft meets Charlie from SCREEN and Peter from LabelHub to talk about something increasingly important in label production: the entire workflow surrounding the press. Both come with years of hands-on experience from production environments. Charlie spent more than three decades in printing before moving to SCREEN, while Peter worked for 20 years as an IT manager at a Danish label-converting company before founding LabelHub. And that experience matters. SCREEN continues to develop its digital label portfolio, including wider and increasingly productive presses, but Charlie explains that customers today are looking at much more than specifications alone. They want to understand how orders enter the company, how files are prepared, how production is automated, how presses connect with finishing, and how errors can be removed before they become expensive. That is where LabelHub fits in. LabelHub integrates with established MIS platforms and combines production data with PDF files, simplifying ordering, reordering, and, increasingly, prepress processes in the cloud. The objective is straightforward: remove unnecessary complexity and make it easier for both converters and their customers to move work through the production process. And catching mistakes early matters. As Charlie puts it, the closer an error gets to the press, the more expensive it becomes to fix. Better upstream automation can save materials, labor, production time, and downstream capacity. For SCREEN, partnerships with companies such as LabelHub — together with finishing partners — make it possible to demonstrate something much broader than a printing engine. Even within a relatively compact exhibition booth, customers can see a complete label production environment from order and prepress through printing, finishing, and final product. For LabelHub, the journey has also changed significantly. Eight years ago, the company was still demonstrating concepts with PowerPoint because the software wasn't ready to be trusted live. Today, major customers run production through the platform, and prepress has become one of its fastest-growing areas. In this INKISH film, we talk about digital label production, workflow automation, MIS integration, cloud-based prepress, partnerships, and why selling a press today increasingly means being able to show the complete production ecosystem. Because the press may still be at the center of production. But it is no longer the whole story.