Confirming the news to PrintWeek India, Samir Patkar, regional sales head – Asia for Gallus, said that the configuration of the first Labelmaster that will be coming to India will be a unique one.

Patkar did not disclose the configuration, but said, “I remember in Labelexpo 2007, Gururaj Ballarwad of Wintek Flexo, (it was not acquired by Signode then), the firm signed a 10-colour Gallus press and in the next, got a 12-colour press. He has always been one step ahead.”

Signode India is a Gallus house, and Patkar said, the configuration will help the company to produce special jobs.

“There are two critical stages, which I think every printer is more of less going through. One is operational excellence, that means, everybody wants to produce fast, and second is to reduce waste – in short, higher overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). For the first time, Gallus has a press that can run at 200 metres per min, which is a reality in flexo. The web path of the Labelmaster is designed to be quite short at 1.4 metres between two print units. The press is equipped with the latest automation of the servo drives keeping in mind the ease of operation for the printers.”

Coming to multi-process capabilities of the Labelmaster, Patkar said, Gallus has redesigned and launched a new screen printing unit and also introduced a new screen consumable, the A-Line screen. “By doing so, our goal is to get to an operational speed of up to 120 metres per min. On the show, the Labelmaster deployed with screen units is running at 100 metres per min.”

At the show, Gallus was seen running three different jobs with different substrates, print repeats and designs in less than 10 minutes. “We wanted to show that at 300 metres, we can change a job with minimum waste and set-up time, and that it’s achievable.”

He added, “Today it’s not about making a press complex with electronics and servos, but how you also make it simple for the operator. That’s what the Labelmaster flexo press is all about.”

Gallus has two beta machines of the Labelmaster installed in Switzerland, two more will be up and running in Russia and Latin America, and it hopes to achieve a target of 20 machines running by the end of March 2018.