The first showers of the season, however, did not dampen the spirit of the 50-plus visitors, who were treated to a display and demo of the Mark Andy P5 series press installed at the production site of Sai Paks, a unit of Sai Group. The open house event was followed by a celebratory dinner and felicitation function.

Deepan Samarth, owner of Sai Paks signed the deal for the Mark Andy P5 series eight-colour flexo press and a Rotoflex inspection plus finishing system at the Labelexpo Europe held in Brussels last year. The flexo press was installed in January this year.

Eight-colour unit is equipped with a differential cold foiling unit, chill rollers, servo driven motors at every section of the machine with two inline die-cutting units and uses inks from Fuji Sericol.

Tejas, the elder son of Samarth, said, the P5 series press was investment was in response to the increasing demand for shrink sleeves and in-mould labels in the packaging sector. “The configuration of the Mark Andy unit is just perfect to meet all the requirements of printing on these substrates.”

This is Sai Paks first horizontal line flexo press. The company also has a Zonten stack flexo press on which it produced labels. The company today produces around 48,000 running meters of labels in an eight-hour shift on the new P5 series press. “The speed is enabled by the pre-register system of the press which has a very high-level of accuracy and runs at the speed of 150-180m/min. Also, it requires very less changeover time,” said Samarth.

Gourav Roy, managing director Flexo Image Graphics (FIG), the representative for Mark Andy in India while conducting the open house stress on the need to host such open houses at a customer’s place rather than places away from India. “It helps in saving a lot of time as well as the potential customers get the feedback from the one who has installed the machine.” 

Roy presented a market study by Mark Andy which revealed that margins for the converters are becoming less and the also the run lengths are becoming shorter, hence profitability and eco-friendly quotients of a press becomes important. “Almost 70-75% cost of the finished labels contributes to the substrate cost. It is critical to reduce wastages. To overcome this, the new P5 Series has a shorter web path of just 1.5 metres between successive printing units and also the throughput of the press has increased.”

During the open house, Shaun Pullen, sales director for the Asia Pacific at Mark Andy, gave a complete demo of the P5 series explaining the features of the press, right from the unwinder to the rewinder.

Pullen demonstrating the P5 Series

Besides the P5 series, Sai Paks has also invested in a Rotoflex Vsi, an offline inspection-cum-finishing equipment built with an E&L camera. “Customers have various kinds of demands such as label count per roll, tension in the winded rolls, backside numbering, and security features. All these requirements are met by the Rotoflex,” said Roy.

Mark Andy has around 300-plus installations across South Asia, of which around 200 are in India. “We expect to add 10-12 more machines during 2018,” concluded Roy.

The Rotoflex

Shaun Pullen felicitating Deepan Samarth on completion 25 years