Uflex to display its co-extrusion laminator at PlastIndia 2018

Ajay Tandon, president & CEO, engineering business, Uflex, said, “To meet the principal application of extrusion coating / lamination, mono extruder is good enough.  However, considering the running costs and flexibility to play with various polymers, co-extruders are gaining traction. In addition to economising the costs, co-extruders also play an important role towards enhancing barrier properties owing to multi-layered combination. Tandem extruder is also being developed so as to execute multi-layered jobs in single run for saving upon the process time.”

At PlastIndia 2018, Uflex will showcase its fully automatic co-extrusion lamination machine that offers benefits such as

• Attainable lamination speed of 300 m/min
• Automatic thickness measurement and control
• Corona treaters to seamlessly integrate treater into flexible packaging extrusion coating & lamination lines
• Independent drives for all segments of the machine
• Heavy duty (sturdy) structure
• Motorised three axis movement of carriage for air gap setting
• Chamber type doctor blade for anchor coating
• T-die with internal duckling and lip opening up to 1mm
• Unique design of lamination drum to maintain even temperature across the width
• Sleeve type coating nip as optional
• All three winders with turret auto-splicing and having edge position control
• AC vector grade motor with digital AC vector drives
• Tandon added, “This machine comes equipped with a back-pressure control system which enables to manage polymers of different MFI (Melt Flow Index) so as to maintain the homogeneity of the extrudate.”

Emphasising upon sustained and incremental value engineering practiced at Uflex, Tandon said, “We are going step by step. Initially we developed a co-extrusion laminator with attainable speed of 250 m/ minute followed by the one with a speed of 300 m/minute that we shall be exhibiting at PlastIndia. In the times to come we shall enhance the speed to 350 m/minute and subsequently graduate to 400 m/minute.”

Sanjay Malik Sabharwal, head of production/ marketing of converting machines at Uflex Engineering, said, “In the field of laminated flexible packaging, no other Indian manufacturer makes these types of extrusion lamination machines. There is clearly a big need gap for Uflex to tap this market. There is an increasingly encouraging demand for extrusion laminated packaging by multinational food and beverage brands in India and overseas alike. We have a good order pipeline and expect to sell at least six to eight machines in the coming year for this application. We have tied up with a subject matter technical expert from the western world having over 35 years of luminary experience in designing and running world class extrusion lamination machines for that market. This will help us making great strides in the international market as well.”

Ashok Chaturvedi, chairman and managing director, Uflex, added, “Our co-extrusion laminator is a highly sophisticated machine that is made in India. With the best in class technology at our disposal and some of the sharpest brains by our side, we are confident of taking this lamination machine to the international market in the times to come.”