manroland proves a wise investment for Printpak

Established 24 years ago, family-run packaging printer Printpak produces high quality litho printed carton packaging for a wide range of consumer goods and automotive parts. In March last year, it invested in a six-colour manroland 706 LV HiPrint as part of a £2million investment that was geared towards boosting capacity at the Leicestershire-based business. As a company that has always invested in manroland technology, a year on it’s typically impressed with the latest addition.

Says Pali Sall, Managing Director, Printpak: “We went for a very high spec machine so there are plenty of features to talk about. However, the two features I’m most taken by are the QuickChange Make Ready and the ColorPilot colour management system. With QuickChange Make Ready our operators can action a complete make ready - blankets and rollers washed, plates replaced and the press inked up – at the touch of a few buttons, and the consistency and reliability of ColourPilot was actually responsible for us winning a major contract. In fact, there have been a couple of jobs recently that we quite simply couldn’t have taken on without the 706.”

According to Mr Sall these included a job for a well known cereal brand whose box was to be produced on what looked like recycled board. The dark brown colour of the board required two layers of white to start with and the ROLAND 706 was able to apply both white layers as well as the rest of the design in a single pass. “This would have been very difficult for us to do at a competitive price before we had the 706,” said Mr Sall. Printpak can also apply two types of gloss in one pass, thanks to the use of a “spare” printing unit and a coating module, as well as accurately shape letters and apply emulsion and UV inks with its ROLAND 706.

In addition to the coating module, the range of options invested in by Printpak included a UV drying unit and manroland’s automated QuickChange Coating, QuickChange Make Ready and QuickChange Wash systems. It also opted for the special larger plate size that accommodates enlarged sheet sizes of up to 3B plus format - which can increase production up to 30 percent - and has been installed on a plinth meaning less frequent feed pile changeovers.

The ROLAND 700 HiPrint has a maximum printing speed of 17,000 units per hour and supports no- to low-alcohol printing - Printpak is currently printing at two percent, down from ten. There is a huge range of possible options, which include fully automated plate changing (APL), manroland’s InlineInspector automated quality checker and the QuickChange range of make ready aids.

Continued Mr Sall: “Something I had to see to believe was that the ROLAND 706 doesn’t mark the sheets at all - in fact, it handles carton brilliantly and we regularly run up to 850 microns with ease. Not only have we increased capacity but the high spec and durability of the machine - and its automated features - mean we are working significantly faster”.

manroland GB’s Sheetfed Sales Director, Gary Doman, handled Printpak’s press investment: “Printpak were looking for a ‘snappy’ press that could respond quickly and handle short-run work. In that respect the flexibility of the 706 HiPrint makes it a very clever investment. The ROLAND 700 HiPrint is the ideal press for packaging and carton printers in general. Profit margins in this sector hinge on being able to produce as much as possible in a single pass and most of manroland’s automated and value adding extras were designed on this press. During the sales cycle we sat down with Printpak to plan the installation project in detail so we were able to clearly determine the options that were best for them.”

Printpak says it has received such exceptional service from manroland over the years that it is happy to deal with the company on both the consumables and service and support side, as well as investing in its heavy metal. It purchases all of its blankets, rollers, fount solutions and washes from manroland’s printcom division. And, although it has experienced no problems so far with the latest press, according to Mr Sall, Printpak knows it can rely on manroland’s printservices division for innovative and comprehensive service and support. As an example, Mr Sall highlights the TelePresence remote access fault finding system, and also says that the press flags up any general user maintenance as and when it’s needed, to the press operator and to himself via email to his PC.

“manroland is the service benchmark by which we compare all our suppliers. Its staff and engineers are all very knowledgeable and clearly come from print backgrounds. I take great peace of mind from being able to rely on a single supplier for our consumables and press maintenance. manroland’s printcom and printservices division provide excellent advice on what’s best for the press, which is a service I value because at Printpak, we don’t cut corners anywhere – we choose the best, which is not always the cheapest.”