Reaching for the stars is easier said than done in any industry, but turning high ambitions into reality was seemingly second nature for a trio of industrious and enterprising Quebec business partners who steered Nita Labeling Systems into an elite manufacturer of cutting-edge label-applying machines, quickly earning global recognition for their technological and operational excellence.

Based in the off-island Montreal suburb of Terrebonne on the city’s North Shore, the company’s swift rise through the labeling industry’s ranks offers a compelling testament to the Canadian spirit of innovation, resilience and originality helping the country continuously reinforce it credentials as one of the world’s foremost manufacturers of high-performance packaging machinery.

For Nita, the company’s journey to industry prominence commenced in earnest in 2002, when local entrepreneur and a former senior telecom company executive Normand Lord purchased what was then a small struggling manufacturing operation making plate-turning devices for flexographic presses.

With limited growth opportunities due to rapid advances in digital printing technologies making these mechanical devices obsolete, Lord quickly decided to change the company’s focus to the manufacturing of automatic high-speed labeling machines used to apply product labels to various types and sizes of containers of food, beverages, pharmaceuticals, household cleaners, chemicals and many other CPG (consumer packaged goods) products typically filled on high-speed, high-volume packaging lines.

To get the ball rolling, Lord hired Nita’s former junior engineer Luc Harvey to oversee the development of the first generation of Nita-brand label applicators that would be unlike anything the industry had seen up to that time.

“Norm told Luc that he wanted him to build the best labeling system in the world and that he wanted him to be a part of that experience,” recalls Nita Labeling Systems co-owner and head of business development and strategic accounts Ken Hubscher.

“For the next three years, Luc worked around-the-clock to build a fully synchronized servo labeling system, which was almost unheard of at the time in North America,” says Hubscher, a lifelong entrepreneur who joined Nita 13 years ago to take charge of its marketing and sales activities.

By 2008, Nita was able to debut its first-generation label applicator at the PACK East trade show in New York City, with Normand and Luc proudly touting their breakthrough servo technology offering a multitude of new opportunities to improve labeling performance and productivity.

“It was a very rudimentary looking labeling machine,” Hubscher notes, “but being fully servo-synchronized, it got a lot of people at the show interested in this whole new cool technology.

“That’s when people really started paying attention to what Nita was doing,” Hubscher states.

With the new technology platform in place, Nita started producing its branded labelers in small quantities, Hubscher recalls, slowly expanding its client base annually for the next four years.

That all started to change beyond recognition soon after Hubscher joined the company in 2013, becoming a minority stakeholder and initiating an aggressive new marketing strategy centered around the inherent benefits of the company’s unique servo-controlled labelers and innovative operating software to run them.

According to Hubscher, the rapport and teamwork between the three co-owners generated a flood of new ideas and concepts to propel Nita to the next level of growth in a surprisingly short time-frame.

“When I joined Nita in 2013, I was only the 12th person hired by Normand since he bought the company,” and since then the company has grown at levels that are hard to describe. We’re talking exponential growth in staff, revenues, and by any other measure.

“Counting our acquisition of Shorewood Packaging a year ago, we now employ nearly 100 people today,” he points out, “and the combined revenues of the two companies are now nearly 15 times more than when I started.”

As Hubscher points out, strong leadership and management skills have been key to the company’s remarkable growth in market share and industry stature.

“I am normally the loudest guy in the room,” he quips, “Luc is the smartest, and Normand was the charismatic visionary that kept pushing Nita on to new heights.

Says Hubscher: “Imitation may the best form of flattery, but we had noticed some other competitors literally copying what we were doing with our technology and marketing for our third-generation machines.

“So back in 2015, Norm, Luc and I decided to completely change the game by not just making better systems, but making system that are beyond the reach of anything else out there.”

This dogged pursuit of excellence laid foundation for the development of state-of-the-art NITA 4.0 IOT software, released in 2018, that enables users to maximize their machine time with features like:

• The Pro-Active Self-Diagnosing system, which combines cyclical monitoring of wear parts and drive and motor feedback for real-time monitoring to alert of any problems before the happen. The system ensures optimal belt tension, drive roller torque and power loads throughout operation and offers in-screen remedy video tutorials to mitigate downtime.
• The Scheduled Preventative Maintenance system, featuring an intuitive in-screen tiled dashboard recommending daily, weekly and monthly maintenance tasks, with each one demonstrated via detailed, high-resolution ‘how-to’ videos and offering full reporting downloadable via Wi-Fi, Ethernet or a built-in OPC/UA.
• In-Screen Parts Inquiring, a super-intuitive, interactive navigation menu allowing parts to be listed and requested via a precise, drill-down 3D drawing component menu.
• Powerful SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) software allowing for real-time display of OEE (operational equipment effectiveness) and other critical data such as uptime, downtime, and container and label usage via the HMI (human-machine interface) dashboard, running on the Windows 10 operating system.
• Nita Total Replication Changeover system, allowing users to replicate set-ups in minutes using stored values in the HMI that relate to color and letter-coordinated locations on the machine, aided by built-in demo videos and 3D images to help locate the adjustment points. More automated digital and servo axis options further enhance the speed and accuracy of product changeovers.

Says Hubscher: “Applying a label is not the secret sauce for our labelers; we have over 50 competitors around the world who can apply a label.

“For us it’s all about uptime. We asked one question, ‘What causes downtime?’ and then we answered it with incredibly advanced and intuitive productivity software and unrivaled aftercare support,” he states.

“Uptime is the fundamental reason for our company’s existence,” Hubscher asserts, citing the high level of craftsmanship and rugged design that enables superior performance even in the most challenging industrial environments.

“Our industrially tough labelers are built for the ‘real world’ production environment,” he says, “and they are designed to last.

“Everything on our machines is made from 304 stainless steel and heavy-duty anodized aluminum, with IP 65-rated protection levels to make them water- and dust-resistant.

“These are not cheap machines,” Hubscher continues. “These are heavy-duty, high-end, high-tech, high-productivity labeling systems built to empower operators, line managers, plant managers, technicians and maintenance people to control their own destiny with the tools that create repeatability, dependability and productivity.

“These are beyond catchwords,” Hubscher proclaims. “It’s the reason we exist.”

Having already doubled the size of its manufacturing facility to 20,000 square feet just five years ago, Nita has recently maxed out its production capacity at the building, setting stage for a pending move to a brand new 40,000-square-foot building, also located in Terrebonne, to expand its operations further.

Since Quebec-based private-equity firm Phoenix Partners acquired a majority ownership stake in the company in 2022, Nita has greatly benefited from the access to financial backing and sharp business acumen Phoenix provided allowing it to continue its robust new product development activities.

This access to additional capital resources has also enabled Nita to expand its manufacturing footprint in the U.S. through the 2024 acquisition of Shorewood Engineering Inc., a Minnesota-based manufacturer of high-speed, pressure-sensitive rotary labeling equipment.

“We purchased Shorewood because their products are a perfect complement to the type of clientele that we serve—high-production, typically large-throughput industrial lines,” Hubscher explains.

“And although our Nita inline systems are designed for and can handle extreme high-speed applications, incorporating great product handling features, there are times when a rotary labeler is simply a better solution compared to an inline machine,” he continues.

“By purchasing Shorewood, we acquired an established line of high-quality, industrial-grade, rough-and-tough pressure-sensitive labeling machines based on a servo technology that is very similar to ours.”

As Hubscher relates, being the first labeler manufacturer in North America to incorporate all-servo synchronized technology into its equipment had provided Nita with an important competitive advantage that still pays off big dividends for the company and its customers today.

Says Hubscher:“Nita’s all-servo technology, ultra-rugged build quality and class-leading productivity software all result in offering serious manufacturers the opportunity to maximize their uptime and empower themselves to maintain unheard of profitability and efficiency numbers vis-à-vis a labeling system.”

As Hubscher proclaims, “The Nita machines are the most intuitive and simple to operate labelers available in the world.

“Furthermore, the unique changeover systems employed by Nita enable any operator to enact a quick and seamless changeover in a fraction of the time it would take on any other machine.

“The software that guides the operators through the process basically allows for a ‘color by number’ approach that matches up values in the screen with colors and stations around the machine,” he reiterates.

“As such, Nita has achieved the ultimate objective of turning turn anyone into a ‘super-operator,’ whereby the all-servo synchronization married to the HMI’s productivity software allows for extensive on-the-fly digital micro-adjustments that take all operator guessing out of the game.

“Moreover, the highly versatile and flexible machines easily adapt to different label and container sizes, shapes, and application styles (top, side, front, wraparound, etc.) with minimal changeovers, Hubscher states, “vastly reducing downtime.”

The company’s core product portfolio currently comprises three major fifth-generation product lines, including:

• The XP series of turnkey systems for front and back, wrap, tapered side, muti-panel and pail labeling applications;
• The Joust range of top-and-bottom, 360-degree banding, C-shape, bags and flat object labeling systems.
• Various models of standalone tamp-blow, wipe-on and print-and-apply labelers.

As Hubscher explains, all Nita-made labelers are designed for fast and easy integration with the end-users’ existing product coding and marking systems with minimal process interruption.

Says Hubscher: “It all starts with our 100 per cent servo-controlled labeling technology, which eliminates the need for PLCs (programmable logic controllers), microprocessor boards, proprietary electronics and many other external components.

“We have built strong relationships with a multitude of other OEMs (original-equipment manufacturers),” he adds, “and we work with a lot of engineering and integration firms that actually choose Nita as their labeling equipment of choice in their projects.

“We also have trained technicians across the country, in the U.S. and now in Mexico, who have access to every one of the thousands of Nita machines out in operations, from the fourth generation on, through our Internet login,” Hubscher expands.

“But above all, what I think really separates us from the competition is our commitment to keeping our customers running,” he points out, which comes from the company culture we collectively had meticulously curated from the early days of Nita.

“Today, along with our chief executive officer Charles Magnan, we are continuing to maintain that ‘Gold Standard’ of client support excellence via our advanced and thorough NitaCare program.

While nearly 80 per cent of all labeling equipment sold by Nita to date has historically been exported to the U.S., the company is eager to expand its Canadian customer base in coming years, according to Hubscher, capitalizing on the ongoing removal of inter-provincial trade barriers and the general “Buy Canadian” sentiment gathering steam across the country’s manufacturing landscape.

“This year, we have put a huge effort into our Canadian growth,” says Hubscher, “and we are already seeing a shift in the numbers.

“We are at about 70-30 split between exports and domestic shipments now,” Hubscher notes, “despite seeing our U.S. sales continue to grow in double digits.

“We are really concentrating on adding more Canadian clients,” he reveals, “and we have restructured our entire Canadian sales operation to continue this growth.

“We take a lot of pride in making the most advanced and rugged labeling systems in the world,” Hubscher concludes, “and we want to ensure that all Canadian manufacturers have ready access to Nita—the easiest to operate, fastest to change over, and simplest to maintain labelers in North America, being built right here in Quebec.”