Smart Labels Packaging, a 14-year-old box making and label manufacturing unit, recently installed an 8- color Mark Andy 2200 narrow web label press at its Kartarpura Industrial Area in Jaipur. Packaging South Asia spoke to Nidhi Upmandewan, administrator production planning control about their operations. An integrated packaging unit was set up complete with commercial printing, box making and label printing operations. Apart from the founding directors, Himender Agarwal, Lokesh Agarwal and Amit Agarwal it is professionally managed by CEO, Bibhuti Bhushan, an expat professional from South Africa with vast experience in the monocartons industry. With a built-up area of 3 lakhs square feet and a staff of 375 people the unit primarily fulfills the secondary packaging needs of the oil industry, with some presence in telecom as well as the FMCG sector.
Label printing and packaging operations
The MA 2200 mechanical label press supports roll to roll sheet printing on PP, PVC, paper, foil sheets and sticker sheets with diecutting and is the first automated Mark Andy flexo press in Rajasthan says Dewan. Apart from this the label press is equipped with slitting and finishing of pressure-sensitive film rolls with optional film, diecut, dual frame and variable printing packages that can expand according to requirement. It also features technologies such as advanced web tension management, self-aligning cassettes and superior drying and curing systems.
The unit also has a 28 x 40-inch KBA Planeta machine, two Heidelberg SM74 offset presses and diecutting and folder-gluer machines apart from several coating and lamination machines and duplex box making machines. “Though we started off primarily as a carton producer,the growth over the lastfewyears has been much higherin the label segment. This was one of the reasons for us to invest in the Mark Andy label press,” says Upmandewan. The label segment is showing over 20% year on year growth and more sophistication and speed is needed to keep up with customer needs.
Excellence in quality
Smart Labels has recently installed a hot melt adhesive machine for coating of adhesive sticker labels and has the finest gumming strength of labels which the company claims is better then water base gumming. They are the first in Rajasthan to use these kinds of gumming technologies and try to provide the best value added high quality service to their clients. The flexo label press is supported by a VSR 300 automatic inspection machine.
Apart from this they have auto tracking spectro densitometers from Techkon which are available on all presses and measure the color bar on press sheets to check consistency. Online barcode and image checkers from AVT on slitter rewinders do 100% checking of every label by comparing against a reference image of a good sample.
Linux Machine Incor, a print quality checking system from Germany, scans a printed sheet and compares against a PDF or a scanned and approved sample sheet. Apart fromdetecting any variations, minute spots, missing items, it also checks the readability of barcodes. The machine can check the entire lot of boxes produced in the packaging section against a defined sample to detect any defect and is needed in sensitive verticals likepharmaceuticals and tobacco where this inspection machine provides 100% checking according to Upmandewan.
