Bobst, one of the world’s leading suppliers of equipment and services to the packaging and label industry for folding cartons, corrugated boards and flexible materials industries, showcased its high-speed folder-gluer VisionFold 110 A2 at PrintPack India 2017. Sharing his opinion about the exhibition, Sunil Khodke of Bobst India said, “Although the footfall fell from the third day, the first two days were tremendous for our company. We concluded five deals during the exhibition. In fact, the machine we showcased at the stand was sold to TCPL and will be directly sent to its Guhawati plant for installation. In addition, we sold a machine to Galaxy Offset and another to Miracle Group.”
Khodke said, “We have three range of equipment in folder gluer category including Ambition, VisionFold, and ExpertFold but in the current scenario the demand for VisionFold has increased due to its versatility and flexibility that satisfies the multiple needs of customers. The new folder gluer with auto collection is a modular-cum-versatile machine with multiple job processing capabilities, and can produce consistent quality over and over again. The added feature in the VisionFold 110 A2 is the flipper ejector, a quality control ejection system that auto-ejects cartons with mix-ups or non-glued cartons detected by any quality control (QC) systems.
A Baumer HHS inspection system, fitted to the kit, will read the barcode for any mix-up in the pharma carton, and eject the defective piece at the speed at which it is running, which is 350 m/min. converting to 1,20,000 cartons per hour. Additionally, the flipper ejection system can eject cartons of any shape (fourcorner, micro-flute box, straight line, lock-bottom) and drop them straight below the system into the tray. The flipper ejector, which earlier came with ExpertFold, is now also available as an option on Visionfold. The machine allows running of conical crash-lock boxes and four-corner trays.
The Swiss manufacturer has its global manufacturing unit in Pune. Khodke shared, “All the orders for folder gluer for Bobst group are supplied from India. We believe in innovation and thus our R&D team keeps adding 600 to 700 different attachments for different structure. With an aim to offer something new to the market, we are planning to come out with the next generation of folder gluer in drupa 2020.”
Discussing the market situation Khodke said, “The market is positive about GST as it has brought good hopes for the industry. Two markets which are growing at a commendable speed are the packaged food and pharmacy segments.”
Sharing the challenges ahead, Khodke said, “According to me the two areas that need to be controlled are production cost and wastage as well as cash flow and rotation of money. These are the biggest challenges that the industry is facing today.”
