At Ultra Labels & Flexpack’s Brisbane site, a major investment in digital and flexo technology is reshaping the company’s flexible packaging offer – and positioning the business for its next phase of growth.
Fifteen years after launching as a digital-first label printer in Brisbane, Ultra Labels & Flexpack is stepping onto a bigger stage.
What began in 2010 as a start-up built around a single digital press and a belief that speed, service and quality could win out over conventional thinking has evolved into a sizeable packaging manufacturing business with operations in Brisbane and the Barossa, approaching group sales of $40 million and employing around 85 people. Today, the company’s Brisbane headquarters is home not only to its established labels operation, but also to a growing flexible packaging division backed by a purpose-built plant expansion and a string of significant equipment investments.
For co-founders Scott Springett and Ross Fursey, the move into flexible packaging was not a departure from the Ultra model, but an extension of it.
“We were digital label printers,” Springett tells PKN during a site visit to the company’s Eagle Farm facility. “Really, this was just the next step – becoming digital flexible packaging printers. It was a nice continuation of what we were doing.”
That continuation has come at a cost. Over the past six years, Ultra has invested around $20 million in its Brisbane operation, including about $15 million in machinery and equipment and a further $4 million on an extension to house new flexible packaging capability. The investment has accelerated sharply in the past year as the company completed the expansion and installed three major new presses – an HP Indigo 200K digital press for flexible packaging, a Nilpeter FA-26 wide web flexo press, and an HP Indigo V12 for labels.
Together, the machines give Ultra a combination of capabilities that is rare not only in Australia, but globally.
STRATEGIC SHIFT
Springett says the strategic logic behind the move is straightforward. Labels remain a strong market, but flexible packaging offers stronger growth potential, driven by convenience, e-commerce, lighter-weight pack formats, and the ongoing shift from rigid to flexible packaging. Ultra was already seeing customers apply labels to bags and pouches, and that raised the obvious question – why not make the pack itself?
The answer, he says, came down to timing and financial readiness.
“We knew the opportunity was there, but until we had the balance sheet to make the investment, we couldn’t go there. This is not something where you dip your toe in. You go headfirst.”
That willingness to invest decisively has been central to the Ultra story from the start. Fursey and another fellow founder had identified a market opening in Brisbane and approached Springett, whose capital backing and deep experience in digital print helped get the company off the ground. Crucially, Springett funded the business so it could operate comfortably in its first year without having to chase low-margin work simply to survive.
That decision helped shape Ultra’s culture and market position.
“Philosophically, we wanted to create a premium business,” Fursey says. “We built the value proposition by doing things quicker, faster and better.”
Lead times that had traditionally stretched to 15 days were cut to five. Quotes were turned around the same day. Print quality improved. Customers could order what they needed, when they needed it, rather than carrying excessive stock and risking obsolescence when regulations changed or SKUs were updated.
One early customer, Fursey recalls, had more than $500,000 worth of labels sitting in storage, much of it obsolete. Ultra’s digital model offered a way out – shorter runs, faster turnaround, and far less exposure to write-offs.
That same logic now underpins the company’s flexible packaging strategy. Digital production gives brands the ability to launch quickly, manage multiple SKUs, respond to regulatory changes, and reduce inventory. It also supports the kind of premium shelf presence increasingly demanded in categories such as wellness, healthcare, nutraceuticals, food and cosmetics.
EXPANDING OPERATION
Walking through the Eagle Farm site, the link between commercial strategy and plant investment becomes clear. The operation is split across two adjoining buildings – one for labels, one for flexibles – with the newer flexible packaging hall built out to accommodate wider-web capability, converting, laminating and pouch-making. The site is kept to a high standard, reflecting the requirements of the markets Ultra serves. In addition to ISO systems, the business operates with HACCP processes for flexible packaging production, enabling it to service tightly controlled sectors including healthcare and pharmaceutical-adjacent applications.
The flexible side includes HP Indigo digital presses, thermal laminating lines, pouch-forming equipment, and digital embellishment capability. AVT inspection systems are deployed across the plant, and nothing leaves the site without camera inspection. As Fursey explains, version control and quality assurance have been embedded in the business from the early days, when Ultra won work from highly regulated nutraceutical manufacturers.
The newest additions are designed to move Ultra “up the volume curve”.
The Nilpeter FA-26, installed in its own dedicated hall, gives the company a high-speed flexo option for longer-run flexible packaging jobs, particularly where local manufacturing can help win business back from offshore suppliers. The press runs at 250 metres per minute and is intended to complement, rather than replace, Ultra’s digital capability.
“We can now do the longer-run jobs that were probably off limits to us before,” Fursey says. “That gives us access to bigger markets, and it helps us drive down unit costs.”
That matters in a market where brands may value local supply, speed and responsiveness, but are still under intense price pressure.
GAME-CHANGING TECH
The HP Indigo V12 plays a similar role on the label side. Ultra has removed two of its HP Indigo 6K presses, with the V12 now matching their combined output in a fraction of the production time. Springett describes the machine as game-changing, allowing Ultra to keep customers on digital print as their volumes grow, rather than pushing them into flexo and introducing variability.
“The same quality, whether they order 1000 or 100,000 – that’s the point,” he says.
The V12 also cements Ultra’s position as one of the country’s largest digital label production sites. At the time of PKN’s visit, the machine was still in the final stages of training and commissioning, with support technicians on site as part of HP’s “lighthouse site” approach for a new regional installation.
Around these press investments, Ultra is also building out converting capacity. Additional high-speed finishing and pouch-forming equipment is either on order or being installed, with the aim of significantly increasing output as flexible demand grows. The company sees flexibles as the major growth driver in the business over the next few years, with the current labels-to-flexibles sales split of roughly two-thirds to one-third expected to move closer to 50:50 over time.
That confidence is rooted not only in technology, but in geography. Springett is bullish on Brisbane and south-east Queensland as a manufacturing base, citing population growth, relative affordability, and the steady migration of businesses north. The Eagle Farm location, close to the airport and major freight links, adds to the appeal.
At the same time, neither founder presents flexible packaging as an easy play. Both are candid about the learning curve involved in printing, laminating and converting flexible structures, and about the ongoing challenges around recyclable mono-materials, customer cost sensitivity, and the still-developing downstream recycling infrastructure needed to support circularity claims at scale.
For Ultra, though, the trajectory is clear. The company is no longer content to fly under the radar.
“I think now we’ve grown up,” Springett says. “We’ve got the people, the balance sheet strength, the confidence in the market, and now we’ve got the tech.”
It is that combination – commercial discipline, digital heritage, and carefully timed capital investment – that now defines Ultra’s pitch to the market. In a sector where many businesses are still talking about transformation, Ultra Labels & Flexpack has spent the past few years building it into the factory floor.
Currie Group backs Ultra’s digital growth
As Ultra Labels & Flexpack expands its production capability, Currie Group has supported the installation of the latest generation of HP Indigo V12 Digital Press and HP Indigo 200K Digital Press technology at its Brisbane site.
The HP Indigo V12 is designed to scale digital label production into higher volumes, delivering consistent colour and repeatability at industrial speeds. With inline priming and high throughput, it enables converters to extend digital printing into work traditionally handled by flexo, while maintaining quality and reducing manual intervention.
In flexible packaging, the HP Indigo 200K supports short – to mid-run production with rapid changeovers and versioning capability. Engineered for flexible substrates, it allows converters to efficiently manage multiple SKUs and respond quickly to shifting customer demand.
Mark Daws, director of Labels & Packaging at Currie Group, says Ultra’s investment reflects broader shifts in the ANZ market.
“We’re seeing growing demand for production environments that can handle greater SKU complexity, shorter runs and faster turnaround times,” Daws says.
“Technologies like the Indigo V12 and 200K are enabling converters to respond to that shift, combining digital quality with the productivity needed to scale.”
Daws says the long-standing relationship between Currie Group and Ultra has been built on a shared focus on capability and performance.
“Ultra has consistently invested ahead of the curve, and our role is to support that through equipment, service and application expertise,”he says.
Looking ahead, he expects digital print to continue gaining ground across both labels and flexible packaging.
“As brand owners demand more agility, digital will play an increasingly important role in how packaging is produced and supplied.”
This article was first published in the Q2 June 2026 print issue of PKN Packaging News, p18.
