Started with conventional engravers with the capacity of 750 cylinders per month, Afflatus, the Indian powerhouse of gravure cylinder making, now has a combined capacity of 15,000 cylinders a month from its four units across India. Afflatus has recently widened its offering to the burgeoning flexible packaging industry with the installation of a state-of-the-art flexo plate making plant in Noida.
Flexography for flexible packaging has taken off in the country in the past few years with about 15 CI flexo presses being installed each year. In addition, a number of Indian press manufacturers are also coming into production with high quality and automated CI flexo presses. Flexo is also preferred for printing on thinner and extensible films and also for shorter runs.
for plate processing through
finishing in a linear design
In its new flexo plate making section at the Noida plant, Afflatus has installed a fully integrated and automated Esko CDI Crystal 5080 XPS imager and a Kongsberg X22 table for flexo plate cutting. The company has invested in the Esko software such as ArtPro, Flexo Tools, Plato, Imaging Engine and Esko’s Digital Flexo Suite, as well as its quality enhancement tools, HD Flexo and Pixel+.
The CDI Crystal 5080 XPS solution not only frees up valuable operator time but also reduces the overall footprint of the flexo equipment and its maintenance. The reduction of manual steps decreases errors by 50% errors, plate waste and reduces operator time by 73%.
The company has also installed the DuPont CYREL 3000 modular inliner system, which performs both plate processing and finishing in a single linear workflow. It is capable of processing more than 120 high quality photo polymer plates per day and is ready for a 24/7 operation with minimal human intervention. Afflatus believes in automation and it plans to further automate the flexo plate exposing and processing workflow as a completely inline operation.
Afflatus gravure production capacity
Afflatus already has a Thinklab robotic cylinder section in the Noida Sector-68 plant. The company has a huge shop floor with 10 conventional electronic engravers from K Walter and Daetwyler installed, as reported by Packaging South Asia in its June 2016 issue. Apart from the robotic facility, the Noida plant also has a huge plating line with a finishing section, and a production capacity of 4800 to 5000 cylinders a month. Its Gujarat plant in Sarigam has an automated laser engraving system as well as electromechanical engravers with capacities of 2400 and 3800 cylinders each month, respectively. The Thirumudivakkam, Chennai plant contains four electromechanical engravers with a production capacity of 2800-3000 cylinders. The Naihati, Kolkata plant has two engravers with capacity of 1500 to 1700 cylinders each month.
Growth plans on the cards
The company has procured 2.5 acre plots of land for each of its two new plants coming up in Greater Noida and Bengaluru. Other plans include the setting up of a new design section at the current plant in Noida to offer even higher quality end-to-end solutions demanded by global brand owners.
