Essential Equipment
Five years ago, 2015, marked the start of what now seems like a never-ending cycle of equipment installations and upgrades. With the purchase of a Totani pouch machine, Poly Print became capable of servicing customers much faster than ever before. Lead time and 100 percent on-time delivery are the benchmarks for ideal service in this industry, and prior to having in-house pouch capabilities, meeting our customers’ time expectations was a significant challenge. Today, Poly Print creates nearly 12,000,000 pouches a year and does not plan to stop there; we have made room for more machines and intend to fill that space in the coming years.
In the same year, Poly Print expanded its slitting and converting capacity with the purchase of a new Bielloni slitter, a new plate mounter from JM Heaford (with the ability to check TIR on sleeves), and more than half a million dollars in upgrades to an existing 10-color Uteco Emerald Press.
These upgrades included a new washup system for faster changeover, all new quick-change doctor blades, upgrades to the PLCs, auto registration and a new quality control system from Grafikontrol. These additions gave Poly Print more capacity to service existing and new customers, as well as allowing faster setups and tighter quality control throughout the production process.
The best was yet to come in 2016 with the purchase and installation of a new 10-color Uteco Onyx printing press. The new Onyx is 44-in. wide and can handle mid web slightly more efficiently than its sister Emerald press, which measures 52-in. This was a strategic decision that would help reduce plate cost and setup cost.
Although the initial investment of new sleeves and anilox rollers had to be considered, in the long run, the benefits of the new press size to the company and its customers outweighed this cost. It wasn’t long before the new press was up and running, quickly filling up with new business. The press lived up to our expectations with faster setups credited to Uteco’s Kiss&Go technology and Grafikontrol’s auto registration. Little things like “fast stop” allow us to make press pulls with less waste and in much less time.
Not long after the installation of the new press, it became evident that production bottlenecks existed in the slitting and converting departments, even with the recent installation of the new slitter. Without much time to catch our breath, we purchased another new slitter from the French manufacturer DCM that was much different than any of the others at Poly Print.
For starters, it has a top mechanical speed of 2,600 fpm, double that of any of our other slitters. The single largest game-changer is the double turrets on the rewind, which allows complete setups between sets in under two minutes. This technology lets the operator safely set up and position cores for the next set while the machine is running. When the set is complete the turret cycles, automatically cuts the film, and then begins running the next set. The output from this machine is three times that of any of our other slitters, so understandably its price was much higher than the other slitters.
Now armed with a new pouch machine, upgraded printing press, new press, new plate mounter and two new slitters, it was time to set our sights on expanding our capabilities and services even further, into laser perforation. Gaining this capability in-house was the next logical step for Poly Print: we were already supplying laser-perforated roll stock to the market, but the laser-scoring function was being outsourced.
Demand for this feature was reaching a point where outsourcing was not a sustainable model to guarantee quick and competitive delivery. Laser perforation is primarily used in produce applications: tiny holes nearly invisible to the naked eye are created in a package surface by a precision laser, which allows the product to “breathe” (release carbon dioxide, which all plants do throughout their life cycles) at a certain OTR (oxygen transmission rate), allowing some CO2 to actually pass through the package.
This “breathing” increases shelf life and substantially reduces food waste; this is why produce in laser-perforated packaging maintains freshness much longer than, for example, fruits and vegetables sold “loose” in grocery store produce sections. Many people do not even realize that plants release carbon dioxide, a compound that contributes to global warming and climate change. In fact, extending the shelf life of plants through laser perforation and packaging technology ultimately helps reduce the amount of CO2 emitted into the air.
Several reputable manufactures of laser technology exist in the market, and after much deliberation, we finally chose Preco, a well-known, established laser manufacturer in the flexible packaging market whose expertise, equipment and service made it an ideal choice. With our new laser capabilities, we can create holes as small as 60-μm, depending on the film structure. Since most laser holes are smaller than the human eye can see, we also installed the latest QC technology that allows us to measure the size of the holes, as well as the air-flow rates through them.
Installation of the laser perforation machine in 2019 increased our ability to supply our customers quickly, competitively and with the newest laser technology. The installation and learning curve have been short and smooth, which we credit both to in-house expertise and the help of Preco, and we intend to continue our growth in this market for years to come.
Capitalization Continues
We have no intention of stopping here: 2020 has marked another year of significant capital investments, including the addition of a new 10-color Uteco Onyx press, which mirrors the Onyx purchased in 2016, new building expansions for the storage of raw materials and inks, and the purchase of a new 30,000 CFM RTO (Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer) from Ship & Shore Environmental Inc.
The new press couldn’t have come at a better time: very recent increases in demand for flexible packaging have stemmed from the combination of consumers spending more time in grocery stores and many packaging providers exploring opportunities to bring packaging supply back to domestic sources.
Increased tariffs and the uncertainty of China-based supply lines, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, have also led many companies to reconsider their relationships to overseas markets. Choosing Uteco made sense for us, since we had already had a positive experience with the first Onyx press, and having two presses from the same product family would allow equipment continuity across the plant.
Operator training will also be minimized, and the ability to share parts across machines combined with various maintenance, service and scheduling synergies made the Onyx a practical choice. This purchase and installation did not come without a sad sentiment, however: to make room for the new Onyx, we had to retire the very first press that was purchased under Genova ownership. Purchased in 1993 and dedicated to Joseph Genova, as indicated by a handprint on a plaque proudly displayed on the machine, the 6-color Schiavi press helped Poly Print make its mark early on in the industry and continued its service for more than two decades until finally being decommissioned in November 2019.
Despite being mechanically identical to our existing Onyx press, the new model comes with a few more bells and whistles than its 2016 predecessor. For example, per-job ink weighing and tracking will allow us to better track ink usage and conduct more precise individual job costing, in addition to directly assisting operators by automatically notifying them when any ink color runs low during production. This feature will also save time and money by preventing anilox starvation, which occurs when ink runs out completely and creates excessive waste and downtime. Other new features we are looking forward to capitalizing upon are the new and improved unwind and rewind turrets.
While we opted for automatic shaftless unwinds on the first Onyx, we chose semi-automatic, shafted rewinds and unwinds on the new Onyx, a system originally designed for Uteco’s larger press model, the Diamond. This configuration is designed to handle heavier rolls and faster production due to its intuitive design for locking and positioning the shafts automatically in place.
Our company history has shaped who we are today, and we know that staying competitive and relevant and living up to our vision will require continual investment in people, processes and technology. Despite the cost and time involved in this effort, the risk to Poly Print of not doing it is far greater: the market demands it, our customers expect it, and it is exactly what we intend to do to remain the leader in flexographic printing and flexible packaging.