“We’ve been in business since 1986” is the kind of line that goes on an About page and gets skimmed past. Fair enough — a number on a wall doesn’t print your labels. But when you’re trusting a supplier with the artwork that goes on every product leaving your line, four decades of doing exactly this is worth more than a bragging right. Here’s the part that actually affects you.
Certified Labeling Solutions has run custom label production from the same Hillsborough, NJ building since 1986 — same business, same address, no reboot. That longevity shows up in ways you can feel: equipment a startup can’t afford yet, people who’ve solved your kind of problem thousands of times, clients who’ve stayed 20+ years, and supplier relationships that held up when supply chains got tight. Longevity you can’t feel is just a birthday.
Plenty of companies founded in 1986 are gone — recessions, supply shocks, and the near-total reinvention of the printing industry took most of them out. The ones still running the same core business, from the same floor, with customers who’ve stayed decades, are a specific kind of shop. Not because “old = good,” but because staying means they kept getting the labels right, order after order, while everyone around them didn’t.
So the real question isn’t how long. It’s what does that time actually get me? Tap through the concrete answers:
Certified Labeling Solutions Inc. has operated from 51 Old Camplain Rd, Hillsborough Township, NJ 08844 since 1986. Not a successor company, not an acquisition — the same business at the same address, with a management team that knows the production floor firsthand. The practical payoff: when a press question, a material issue, or a tricky spec comes up, the person answering the phone has handled that exact category of problem for decades. You’re not funding someone’s on-the-job training.
A 40-year history doesn’t mean 40-year-old machines — it means four decades of reinvesting in the press floor. Certified Labeling Solutions runs a Nilpeter 13” 7-color and a Nilpeter 11” 6-color (Danish-built narrow-web flexo presses widely considered a quality benchmark), a Rotoflex 16” for wider-format runs, and an Allied Gear 10” with inline overlaminating. Every press carries inline video web inspection, so labels are checked electronically as they run rather than spot-sampled afterward. That level of capital investment — plus ANSI/ISO barcode verification and Pantone/PMS spot-color matching — is exactly what a new shop hasn’t had time to build.
Several current Certified Labeling Solutions clients have been ordering for 20 or more years; Domino Foods, Lipo Chemicals, and American Sugar Refining are among the long-tenured accounts. Manufacturers don’t keep a label vendor for two decades on price alone — they stay because the labels are right, the relationship is dependable, and problems get resolved. Keeping a major food or chemical account across multiple plant managers and product-line generations is direct evidence of consistency at scale.
Four decades of buying from the same raw-material suppliers — face stocks, adhesives, and inks — earns a kind of priority that a new purchasing account can’t. Add buffer stock of common materials on the shelf, and the benefit is boring until it isn’t: fewer material surprises, and runs that start on schedule even when the market tightens.
Four decades of jobs means thousands of dies already in stock. If your label is a standard shape, there’s usually no tooling charge — you skip a cost a newer supplier would have to pass along. Standard new flexo jobs run about two weeks from artwork approval; reorders on tooling we already hold often turn in a week or less. The library is a direct, dollar-and-days advantage of having been at this since 1986.
Every account gets one dedicated point of contact — not a customer-service queue. That’s the person who knows your die number, your stored plates, your material spec, and your usual lead time without looking them up. Knowing your program cold is exactly the kind of thing that develops over years, not weeks.
Longevity isn’t a trophy on the shelf. It’s the reason label number 48,000 still matches label number one — three reorders and two plant managers later.
Label rules have changed a lot since 1986. The FDA has revised food-labeling requirements more than once. GS1 barcode standards were adopted and updated. DSCSA serialization landed on pharma. OSHA’s HazCom 2012 update swapped the old hazard-communication standard for the GHS framework.
Certified Labeling Solutions has worked through every one of those shifts alongside its customers — not just updating internal processes, but helping clients figure out what a new rule meant for their specific products and how to bring their label programs into compliance. When the next requirement drops, a supplier that’s already survived a half-dozen of them is a very different resource than one on its first.
Straight talk: this isn’t the cheapest option in every scenario. A newer shop can undercut on price partly because it hasn’t yet invested in Nilpeter infrastructure, inline inspection on every press, or deep material inventory. That’s a real trade-off — for you to weigh, not for us to spin.
What four decades buys instead is a track record of labels that are right, on time, for customers who keep coming back — and it’s verifiable. If you’re weighing a change, our guide on choosing a custom label manufacturer walks through the questions worth asking any supplier, us included.
Do the reference check: ask any label manufacturer to name long-tenured clients and how long they've stayed. Time in business only means something if the customers stayed too.
Certified Labeling Solutions has manufactured custom labels in Hillsborough, NJ since 1986, serving food & beverage, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, manufacturing, and logistics companies across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania — and shipping nationwide as we grow.
Want a supplier that’ll still know your account in 2036? Call (908) 495-6235 or request a quote, and we’ll talk through your label program.
Certified Labeling Solutions has manufactured custom labels since 1986, operating from the same building at 51 Old Camplain Rd in Hillsborough Township, NJ the entire time. It is the same business at the same address, not a successor company or an acquisition, serving food and beverage, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, manufacturing, and logistics companies across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, and shipping nationwide.
Only if you can feel it. Longevity matters when it shows up as equipment a startup cannot afford yet, staff who have solved your kind of problem thousands of times, clients who have stayed 20 or more years, and supplier relationships that held when supply chains got tight. A founding date by itself is just a birthday; ask any manufacturer to show where the time actually went.
CLS runs a Nilpeter 13-inch 7-color press and a Nilpeter 11-inch 6-color press (Danish-built narrow-web flexo presses widely considered a quality benchmark), a 16-inch press for wider-format runs, and an Allied Gear 10-inch press with inline overlaminating. Every press carries inline video web inspection, so labels are checked electronically as they run rather than spot-sampled, alongside ANSI/ISO barcode verification and Pantone spot-color matching.
Several current clients have been ordering for 20 or more years; Domino Foods, Lipo Chemicals, and American Sugar Refining are among the long-tenured accounts. Manufacturers do not keep a label vendor for two decades on price alone; they stay because the labels arrive right and problems get resolved. Keeping a major food or chemical account across multiple plant managers and product-line generations is direct evidence of consistency at scale.
Usually not. Four decades of jobs means thousands of dies already in the in-house library, so if your label is a standard shape there is typically no tooling charge, a cost a newer supplier would have to pass along. Standard new flexographic jobs run about two weeks from artwork approval, and reorders on tooling already on file often turn in a week or less.
Sometimes, and that trade-off is worth naming honestly. A newer shop can undercut on price partly because it has not yet invested in Nilpeter presses, inline inspection on every press, or deep material inventory. What an established manufacturer's price buys instead is a verifiable track record: labels that are right, on time, for customers who keep coming back, plus a supplier who has already navigated FDA, GS1, DSCSA, and GHS regulatory shifts alongside its clients.
Send us a sample, artwork, or just your specs — we'll quote it fast. Manufacturing in Hillsborough, NJ since 1986, shipping nationwide.
