Howard Southgate passed in November 2025, aged 87. He was the father of Labelnet’s owner and founder Neil Southgate and worked at the company part-time for a number of years. 

During his time at Labelnet he supported the business with strategic financial decisions, health and safety procedures and with compliance support, including leading the business to achieve ISO 9001 and 14001 for the first time in 2015. 

Before joining Labelnet, Howard Southgate owned and managed Skegness-based custom label manufacturer Paperwork UK. 

He was a keen cricketer and leaves behind two sons, Neil and Philip, his wife Mary and three grandchildren. 

In his memory, next month the company will rename its recently opened digital centre as the Howard Southgate Digital Centre, with a memorial plaque and photo put up within the building. 

The additional site opened in October 2025 to house the company’s digital print and finishing equipment, including a newly purchased Domino inkjet press. 

Situated in Ongar, Essex, just 100 metres down the road from Labelnet’s main site on the same industrial estate, the digital centre offers an additional 29sqm, bringing the company’s total space to 108sqm. 

With a 140% increase in turnover since 2014, space had become a problem for the business Rob Lorkins, Labelnet Managing Director, told Printweek. 

“After various changes of working process to ensure we were as efficient as possible with material deliveries, conversion and shipments, we just needed more space for all work in progress and to improve on workflow and efficiencies,” Lorkins said. 

All digital machinery has now moved to the new site, including a Domino N610i and N730i, and an ABG Digicon Lite. 

The brand-new Domino N730i UV inkjet press was installed in August last year as an upgrade to the N610i, which was kept on. 

“Due to our N610i being six years old we were ready to upgrade on our offering in terms of print quality, speed and efficiency as well as additional capacity and improved turnaround time,” said Lorkins. 

The N730i offers 1,200dpi, compared to 600dpi with the previous machine. This upgrade in speed and resolution made the machine a “perfect choice” for dealing with high quality and large volume jobs added Lorkins. 

“We expect with our increased capacity and capability we will offer existing and new customers improved lead times and quality and continue our growth journey internally,” he said. 

In addition to the two Domino presses and Digicon Lite, the company has an Edale FL3 eight-colour UV press for reverse, adhesive print, cold foil and lamination, a four-colour Digicon series 3 for UV, hot foil, emboss, deboss and flatbed screen, and three slitter rewinders. 

Founded in 1999, Labelnet has 34 members of staff and a turnover of £5.2m.