Uflex, one of India’s largest end-to-end flexible packaging solutions company, showcased its embossing cylinders at the India International Leather Fair (IILF) in Chennai. Held from 31 January to 3 February 2017 at the Chennai Trade Centre, the leather show was attended by an overwhelming number of manufacturers, retailers, designers as well as exporters from around the world.
At the Uflex stand in the show, Sachin Dahake, deputy general manager – marketing (cylinder division), Uflex said, “We are here because out of our cylinder business, we have started a new laser engraving line in Noida, which is a fully automatic plant where one person can produce up to 60 cylinders a day.”
Uflex’s embossing cylinders are primarily aimed at people having their own tanneries or those producing genuine leather, who use these cylinders for embossing or printing various kinds of effects on the leather surface. The other market for these embossing cylinders is leatherite, which is basically artificial leather used for making ladies’ purse, sofa covers, seat covers, etc.
display the stand
“In India, IILF is the biggest exhibition for leather and leatherite. Most of the people exhibiting at the show here either have their own leather tannery or are producers of leatherite. Some of them are our esteemed customers. So, we thought it would be a good platform to have a direct contact with them and close a few good deals,” informed Dahake.
Uflex’s cylinder business has a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for producing rotogravure cylinders, flexo plates and flexo printing sleeves that carry out intaglio printing process, which involves engraving and transfer of the image onto an image carrier. The image is engraved on cylinders and flexo plates. For manufacturing these printing cylinders, the engineers at Uflex carry out the entire process right from the steel base, copper plating, surface finishing, digital engraving, chrome plating and subsequently to final proof print.
“All the manufactured cylinders are proofed not only to cross-check the process parameters but also to validate output synchronization amongst pre-press, engraving machine and printing machine. So, we ensure that whatever we proof is replicated in print,” said Akshay Dubey, manager – marketing (cylinder division), Uflex.
Talking about exports, Dubey shared, “We are already in talks with a leatherite manufacturer in Iran and we plan to start sending cylinders to them soon.”
