Integrated Packaging removes baking oven with Fujifilm's Brillia HD LH-PJE plate
Printing without pause - packaging manufacturer puts in Fuji thermal CTP without losing a minute’s production.
Integrated Packaging is an approved supplier to all the UK's major supermarket chains, producing paper and board-based food packaging for a wide range of products. Running a lean and efficient operation is key to the company's expansion in a fiercely competitive market where customer requirements for the timely delivery of high quality products permit no margin for error.
A steady supply of plates for the company's three 6-colour Komori Lithrone presses is therefore essential, and it was here that the existing prepress installation had been struggling, with long-term platesetter reliability and support issues.
"When things went wrong we could have the platesetter out of action for whole days," recalls general manager Godfrey Burn. "We also had occasions when there were problems with plate supply."
Matters came to a head with the planned installation of the third Komori press scheduled for May 2007. Burn turned to Fuji in late 2006, who proposed a Luxel T-9500 thermal platesetter and Brillia HD LH-PJE thermal plates that can be used with UV inks - employed extensively by Integrated Packaging - without baking.
"We couldn't accommodate trials, but I spoke to other users and to Komori who were very happy with the plate, and that was good enough for me," says Burn.
Fuji installed two Luxel T-9500 platesetters, one 20-plates-per-hour model with an online processor and the other a 10-plates-per-hour manual unit for backup, in May. The switchover went completely without a hitch and was easier than Burn had anticipated:
"I had been concerned about the effect of our abrasive blanket wash on the non-bake plate, and how it would react to the alcohol in our dampening system," he recalls, "but there were no problems at all. We had planned to run the old and new platesetters in parallel but the changeover was so easy on the first press that we switched the other two to the Fuji plate immediately. The installation was spot-on, we didn't lose one minute of production time.
"We've also made a big energy saving by being able to get rid of the oven; that was one of the most energy-hungry bits of equipment in the plant," he adds.
Burn concludes, "I'm a realist. I know things will go wrong, but it's how they're dealt with that makes the difference. I'm delighted with the professionalism of the Fuji demonstrators and engineers."
