Epson America Inc. (epson.com) and Loftware Inc. (loftware.com) announce a new strategic partnership designed to support the growing demand for color label printing. Now as part of their Enterprise Labeling Solutions offering, used by thousands of companies globally, Loftware is delivering native print drivers that use EPSON ESC/Label language to drive the Epson ColorWorks® C7500 and C7500GE on-demand inkjet label printers.

This demand for color labeling is being propelled by the need to support regulatory standards, customer branding demands and product identification/use requirements, while avoiding the cost and maintenance issues associated with using pre-printed label stock. Loftware is introducing native ESC/Label drivers across its Enterprise Labeling Solutions with the recent release of Loftware Print Server® 11.1 and an upcoming release of Loftware Spectrum® this fall. The native printer drivers introduced in these releases maximize speed and performance for the Epson ColorWorks C7500 and C7500GE inkjet label printers, which is a vital part of Loftware’s solutions that companies rely on to address complex labeling challenges across their global supply chains.

“It has become increasingly important for companies to have a printing solution that can both handle color labeling requirements while optimizing print performance to meet demands for mission critical label printing,” says Andy Scherz, senior product manager, commercial label printers, Epson America, Inc. “By collaborating with Loftware, the industry leader in Enterprise Labeling, we are able to provide customers with the ability to drive Epson printers natively to support all of their increasing color labeling demands,” he added.

The increasing demand for more data on labels and more dynamic content on a per label basis, combined with the burgeoning demand for color, call for labeling solutions which leverage the power of native drivers, especially since these types of requirements are not easily met by using Windows drivers. The partnership is significant in addressing today’s color label printing challenges by enabling companies to leverage a combined software and hardware solution that can meet enterprise-level performance and scalability requirements.

“We’re excited to further our relationship with Epson, especially as the demand for color label printing and Enterprise Labeling has become increasingly important in so many industries. Our partnership creates an extremely powerful color label printing solution by combining Loftware’s industry leading Enterprise Labeling software capabilities with Epson’s advanced color print technology,” says Josh Roffman, Loftware vice president of product management. “Our customers will benefit by being able to meet all of their color labeling requirements while ensuring fast and reliable printing across global operations.”

Loftware’s Enterprise Labeling Solutions, including its flagship solution Loftware Spectrum, offer extensive native color print capabilities to support all types of color printing across a global enterprise. Access to Loftware’s native printer drivers offers companies substantial time and cost savings for color label printing. The company’s native print drivers remove the need to install and manage Windows printer drivers while also offering customers the flexibility to deploy on Linux based platforms. At the same time, the native drivers reduce the size of print streams to dramatically increase print speed and simplify the printing process.

Also, developed by one of the largest label printer manufacturers in the labeling and packaging industry, Epson’s ColorWorks labeling solutions deliver proven results for a wide range of on-demand, full-color labeling applications. Epson ColorWorks solutions are ideal for high mix label requirements, and deliver dependable, commercial inkjet printing with fast-drying, durable color inks to meet stringent quality and efficiency demands of large enterprise customers looking for a fast, on-demand solution for better efficiency in the supply chain. In addition, given the on-demand nature of the printers, customers can quickly customize label size and information, eliminating the need to inventory high numbers of pre-printed labels, resulting in much lower overall label costs.