Julie Watson · CEO · Ultimate Bindery · Ultimate Tech · Hunkeler Innovationdays 2025 · #HID25

In the previous Ultimate Tech interview, we discussed the new version of Impostrip. We were honestly so busy that we didn’t get a chance to talk to Julie Watson about the latest version of Ultimate Bindery, but Pat McGrew took the chance to talk and get the update, and here we are!

En Greg Bane · Imposition Solution Account Manager · Ultimate Tech · PRINTING United 2025

Greg Bane · Imposition Solution Account Manager · Ultimate Tech · PRINTING United 2025

At Printing United in Orlando, Morten B. Reitoft from INKISH sits down with Greg Bane from Ultimate Tech to discuss the company’s focus on automation in large-format printing. Greg explains that automation has become increasingly important as print shops face tighter deadlines, higher material costs, and the constant need to improve efficiency. By streamlining workflows and reducing manual intervention, automation helps printers achieve faster turnaround times, optimize costs, and maximize the return on their hardware investments. Bane highlights Ultimate Tech’s continued innovation in workflow automation and imposition software. The company’s solutions integrate seamlessly with any digital front end, printer, or cutting equipment, offering full flexibility regardless of brand. Their two-way communication capabilities allow operators to receive detailed feedback from devices, including data on material usage and waste. This enables printers to make better production decisions and minimize losses, particularly when working with high-value substrates. He also discusses the power of shape-nesting optimization, where the software calculates the most efficient way to position jobs on a sheet or substrate. When given a bit more time to process, the software often finds surprisingly effective layouts that significantly reduce waste. According to Bane, these savings alone can easily justify the software investment. Reflecting on his own background, Bane shares that he joined Ultimate Tech less than a year ago after previously working with the company as a partner. He praises the team’s professionalism, strong ethics, and deep industry experience. As the conversation wraps up, he emphasizes the key takeaway for the print industry today: automation is no longer optional. To remain competitive and meet modern customer expectations, printers must embrace “automation, automation, and automation.”

En Julie Watson · CEO · Ultimate Tech · LabelExpo Barcelona 2025

Julie Watson · CEO · Ultimate Tech · LabelExpo Barcelona 2025

Julie explains that Ultimate has been investing heavily in R&D over the past few years, expanding its solutions beyond commercial print into new segments such as labels, digital packaging, and wide format. The company’s goal is to eliminate manual prepress work by enabling full hands-free automation from web storefronts or MIS systems through to printing and finishing. At the booth, they are demonstrating automated label production with an HP Indigo press and a GM LC350 laser die-cutter, showing how their software dynamically handles mixed jobs, different shapes, sizes, barcodes, and changeovers all on a single roll. Julie notes that digital printing is changing the market by enabling shorter runs, personalization, and mass customization, while also creating complexity from managing many SKUs and batches—something Ultimate’s solutions can fully automate. The system can even manage extended content labels such as pharmaceutical booklets and handle batching and separation for multi-customer rolls directly from CSV or MIS data, with no manual touch points. She highlights Ultimate’s unique strength in centralizing workflows: instead of separate imposition software tied to each device, Ultimate offers a unified platform that can drive diverse applications—commercial, mailing, books, labels, and wide format—through a single pipeline. This reduces training and maintenance complexity while improving scalability. Julie adds that while many customers still run Ultimate on-premise, the software can also run in the cloud, on Windows, Mac, or Linux servers, and can dynamically scale for peak seasons. This flexibility allows customers to start small, expand capacity when needed, and process maximum volumes during high-demand periods. She concludes that this approach helps converters accept more orders, shorten turnaround times, and boost revenue during peak seasons.

En Raymondo Duval · Ultimate Automation Facilitator · Ultimate tech · LabelExpo Barcelone 2025

Raymondo Duval · Ultimate Automation Facilitator · Ultimate tech · LabelExpo Barcelone 2025

Ray explains that Ultimate’s growing portfolio isn’t a burden but an advantage, because it all builds on the same core foundation: placing pages, objects, labels, and stickers on media automatically—whether it’s paper, plastic, or vinyl. While their functionality has broadened into labels, extended content labels, packaging, and prototyping, their focus remains automation and centralization, helping customers unify production across multiple print segments. He notes that many converters entering the booth face the same challenges seen years ago in commercial print: short runs, rising job counts, complex upstream metadata, and too many manual steps. Once they see Ultimate’s automation in action, they realize they can produce personalized and variable labels at scale without adding staff—freeing existing equipment to run more jobs. Ray adds that buyers of new digital presses often inherit multiple different DFE/imposition systems, which complicates training and maintenance. Ultimate solves this by centralizing all job preparation, including embellishment and finishing (like laser cutting), into one automated workflow—so customers don’t need separate tools per device. He concludes that this centralization lets converters diversify applications and grow their business using the same resources, and that the key message from LabelExpo is simple: automation, automation, automation.