Kohli Industries organized an Open House at its Ambernath manufacturing unit, about 40 km from Mumbai on 28 November 2014 to showcase the E-Press-400 gravure electronic line shaft printing press. The machine has been made in India at the manufacturing unit of Kohli Industries and is being marketed and sold by Uteco of Italy. This is the second product from the Kohli-Uteco stable. The V-Press-300 with a printing speed of 300 metres a minute was launched in 2013.
The newly launched E-Press has a printing speed of 400 metres a minute. Some of the key features of the machine are unwind and rewind turrets with auto splicing at full production speed which eliminates the need to reduce machine speed during splicing. It has special low friction dancer roll assemblies at unwind, infeed, outfeed and rewind for precise control of web tension. The press has a auto-register control system from Eltromat.
Some other features include ELS software from Uteco, precisely synchronized with Eltromat for minimum wastage during speed change, splice and machine stop, and a drying and heating system with LEL control. The machine has been manufactured according to the safety requirements for CE and EU directives compliance.
The Kohli and Uteco partnership is now almost five years old. The two parties met at drupa 2008 and the partnership with Uteco began in 2009 when Kohli started looking at a long-term strategy where the company thought it was essential for it to join hands with a leading European company to combine their technological know-how and Kohli’s manufacturing capabilities.
The partnership with Uteco has been a win-win situation for both parties. This main idea behind this Open House was to tell Indian customers that a machine of such specification can be successfully made in India, says Kaku Kohli, director of Kohli Industries. The thinking among Indian customers who are looking for machines of such specification is that it can only be made in Europe. Through this Open House we wanted to make a dent into that kind of mindset. We wanted to tell gravure printers and converters that the machine manufactured in Ambernath is as good as the machines made in Europe. I am happy to tell you that the response from customers has been amazing.
Currently, majority of the presses made under the Kohli-Uteco partnership are being exported to printers in the Middle East and even Europe. According to Kohli, the V-Press-300 was installed at companies in Bulgaria as well as Italy in the past year. Going by the kind of response we have got from global customers for the earlier V-Press-300, we are sure to get a similar response for the latest model, the E-Press 400, as well. Due to the response we got from European customers, we see the world as a potential market, Kohli concludes.
