11 August 2020. As part of a plan to expand its production capacity and grow business, Essel Propack, located in Danville, Virginia, installed the Gallus Labelmaster 440 from Heidelberg to satisfy the increasing quality standards in the laminated plastic tubes market. Rebecca Melville reports.
Labelmaster – Expanding Capacity, Increasing Quality, and Productivity
Essel’s Labelmaster, equipped with nine flexographic printing units, guarantees high-quality printing due to precise color-to-color registration – even at maximum speeds of up to 200 m/min. According to Shrikant Jindam, Printing Head Americas of Essel Propack, “Our customers were looking for an option with higher quality, so we knew that Flexo would be our best option. We can run this press at top speeds and not have to worry about the quality lacking.”
With a printing width of 440 mm, the Labelmaster has a wider offering of printing decoration methods for customers, including flexographic, screen, cold foil, hot foil embossing, and metallic doming. The press has an extremely short web path (only 1.4 meters between printing units) and produces minimal waste thanks to the quick set-up times and stable register accuracy.
According to Jindam, “Not only does the ease-of-use impact our productivity day-to-day, but it was extremely easy to learn how to use this machine. It only took three days to train on, and by the end of the week, we were running at full speed – ready to take on new jobs.”
RCS 330: Minimizes waste, reduces changeover times
Alongside the Labelmaster, Essel Propack has a Gallus RCS 330, a flexible, modular inline press with direct drive technology. Individual printing methods on the machine can also be replaced without needing to separate the web. Thanks to the high degree of automation in all modules, the press minimizes waste and dramatically reduces changeover times while giving the flexibility to grow over the years.
“The RCS has been a great machine for our company, so much so that it is our platform of choice for Essel all over the world in different segments of our company,” said Jindam. “We’ve enjoyed partnering with Gallus throughout the years – they have always been supportive and only a phone call away. We look forward to our continued partnership with Gallus and Heidelberg in the years to come.”
About Essel Propack
As the largest specialty packaging global company, Essel Propack, manufactures laminated plastic tubes catering to the FMCG, Pharma, and Cosmetic spaces. Employing over 3000+ people, Essel Propack functions through twenty state-of-the-art facilities and in ten countries – selling circa eight billion tubes and growing each year. As the world’s largest manufacturer of laminated plastic tubes, Essel Propack caters to diverse categories that include brands in beauty and cosmetics, pharma and health, food, oral, and home. While offering customized solutions by continuously pioneering first-in-class innovations in materials, technology, and processes.
