Gallus Group has announced that Italian label converter Artes Etichette has installed the first commercial Gallus Five hybrid press worldwide, expanding its digital label production capabilities.
The company was also the first in Europe to install a Gallus One in 2024
The new system, installed in December 2025, is already enabling Artes to migrate a significant portion of its conventional workload to digital production, reducing set-up times, lowering material waste, and simplifying production processes. It currently operates two shifts per day, totalling around 15 hours of production.
Gallus is a subsidiary of Heidelberg, which collaborated on the development of the Gallus Five hybrid platform. The press incorporates Heidelberg’s Saphira UV05 ink set, designed to increase pigmentation levels while reducing ink consumption and overall operating costs.
Within a few months of installation, Artes has begun using the press for a growing share of its production, particularly for food label applications, while also supporting work across chemicals and detergents, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and durable goods. Typical jobs are around 10,000 linear metres, with successful runs reaching up to 60,000 linear metres, demonstrating the system’s suitability for higher-volume production.
According to Artes CEO Luca Airoldi, the press is increasingly becoming a preferred platform for work requiring consistent quality and productivity. “Quality is being taken for granted,” he said. “There isn’t a customer who says, ‘make me less beautiful labels for a lower price.’ Labels must be perfect, and the Gallus Five delivers the precision required to hit that standard every time.”
Operating at speeds of up to 100 metres per minute, the press’s combination of colour stability, predictable registration, reduced waste and shorter make-ready times has also helped streamline operations. Mr Airoldi said the digital nature of the platform allows the company to respond more quickly to urgent jobs.
“The Gallus Five allows us to meet challenging delivery times. When customer demands are urgent, quality and dependability are paramount. With this machine, it is very difficult to make mistakes,” Mr Airoldi said. “With conventional technologies, if you have four or five colours, you need to factor in time to start up. With digital, you save time in setup, and material. There are no ink leftovers, no startup waste. This means that a complex job that may have previously required several hours of preparation can now be started in around 30 minutes.”
Gallus said the investment also reflects continued growth in the Italian label market, which it estimates was worth around $2bn in 2024 and is expected to expand steadily in the coming years as packaging requirements evolve and product variation increases.
CEO of Gallus Group Dario Urbinati said the installation demonstrates how hybrid printing technology is increasingly being adopted for industrial-scale production. “Seeing the Gallus Five deliver immediate, measurable impact for customers like Artes reinforces how Gallus, as a system integrator, is supporting converters in deploying digital production reliably in real production environments,” he said. “Artes Etichette’s success demonstrates how hybrid technology has moved beyond potential and niche applications to become a true industrial production solution.”
The installation continues a long-standing relationship between Artes and Gallus machinery that dates back to the 1970s with flexographic and typographic systems. In recent years the company has expanded its digital capabilities with two Gallus Labelfire presses installed in 2018 and 2022, along with the Gallus One.
