According to Tejas Tanna, director at Printmann, the investment in the second folder-gluer from Bobst was a “logical progression”.

The brand new Expertfold has replaced the Acme folder-gluer machine, which did not have the online Braille option. Due to increase in volume, Braille jobs produced by this machine were done offline. This resulted in a bottleneck in the post-press.

Tanna said, “Today 70-80% of the pharma jobs require Braille. Since the excess job produced by Acme, apart from the jobs on the first line of Expertfold, were done offline; there was an increase in the WIP materials and slowed down the delivery of the jobs by approximately two days.”

“With Expertfold, Braille is done online in a single pass. After this installation, our productivity has increased by 25%. Today, the inventory lies in the pipeline for six hours in post-press, as against to 2-3 days earlier,” added Tanna.

He said, “The machines from Bobst are sturdy and produce consistent quality output and problems like cross pasting among others are automatically taken care of. Also, with some training, our operators are able to run the machine hassle free.”

As with the first, the second Bobst folder-gluer is fitted with a gluing system by HHS and a glue line detection system by Baumer.

Amit Tiwari, sales manager – west (sheetfed), Bobst India, said, “Expertfold is a versatile machine and is ideal for processing simple as well as complex boxes. Also, special retrofits can be added to upgrade the machine at any time. The best feature of the Expertfold is the rotary Braille embossing process which produces consistent dot height of Braille characters with a consistent quality of output.” According to Bobst, the rotary tools can be supplied by the Bobst Pune unit within two-three working days.

In addition, Printmann has also invested in a carton inspection machine from Autoprint. The machine is currently under trial and will be pressed into production within a week.

Printmann Group specialises in four verticals: cartons, leaflets (which includes inserts, medi-guides, and outserts (for the US Market), self-adhesive labels on bottles and most recently aluminum foil, which is blister and strip packs.