Bobst closed several deals at the recent K 2013 exhibition in Dusseldorf, where 60% of visitors to the Switzerland-based firm’s were new customers.
Open hours at the company’s technology centres in Bielefeld (Germany), Manchester (UK) and San Giorgio Monferrato (Italy) also attracted a strong response, according to Bobst.
Key areas of interest for the show’s visitors were Bobst’s solutions for coating and metallising materials for flexible packagings, as well as entry-level solutions for gravure printing, said the firm.
Eric Pavone, business director of Bobst’s webfed business unit, said the flexible packaging market had withstood the current economic turndown.
“Despite the difficult situation of the global economy, the market for flexible packagings is proving to be highly dynamic,” he said.
“Manufacturers of branded goods are constantly in search of innovative solutions that enable them to further improve the attractiveness and functionality of flexible packagings. Both aspects are key to consumers’ purchasing decisions.”
At K 2013 and at its open house events, Bobst presented innovative way to meet the market’s steadily increasing demands, he added.
“This applies to clear coatings with excellent barriers properties, for instance, where Bobst is the world market leader,” he said.
“Another example is the latest generation of the ROTOSIL high-speed silicone coating line, which is used to manufacture release liners which are used for products for the automotive and aerospace industries, as well as other sectors.”
While activities on Bobst’s stand at K 2013 revolved around technology demonstrations, the open houses focused on hands-on sessions on flexo printing and laminating, vacuum metallising, and gravure printing and laminating.
In Bielefeld, almost 100 visitors saw live demonstrations of an F&K 20SIX was used for CMYK and white printing of two ‘trendy’, very high-quality petfood packagings made of 12 µm PET, including on-the-fly job changing at full production speed.
Both jobs were prepared using the smartGPSTM offline registration and impression setting system, meaning that the high productivity of the F&K 20SIX could be exploited to the full and waste significantly reduced.
For the first time in Bielefeld, a CL 850D multi-technology laminator was also used for duplex lamination of the flexo printed 12 µm PET reel with 6.35 µm aluminium foil at a speed of 430 m/min.
Presentations in both Bielefeld and Düsseldorf also included the CI Cleaning Unit retrofit kit, a completely automated cleaning system for the chromium-plated central impression cylinders of CI presses.
Also on show was the Print Unit Calibration Cylinder, a tool for high-precision calibration of flexo print units, ensuring perfect parallelism of the cylinders with micrometre accuracy and synchronising the length and side registers.
The Manchester open house on 15 October attracted about 60 visitors from markets such as North and South America, Africa and India.
The latest generation of the General K5000 vacuum metalliser premiered in a demonstration featuring a Bobst General Hawkeye – Pinhole Detector.
The second demonstration focused on the AIOx process in which Bobst uses standard aluminium metallising machines as the basis for clear barrier coatings, thus permitting flexible processing of a host of different films, such as PET, BOPP, CPP or PLA.
Typical applications for the coated films include baked goods and microwaveable products.
At its Technology Centre for gravure printing and the coating and laminating of flexible materials in San Giorgio Monferrato Bobst presented the Rotomec 4003MP with shaftless cylinders
The new configuration rounds off options for the Rotomec 4003 platform, the commercially most successful range of gravure presses from Bobst.
Designed for medium runs of printed flexible packaging materials, the Rotomec 4003MP also suits applications such as decorative printing and security printing.
By adding operations such as solvent-based or solventless lamination or in-register cold seal coating, it can moreover be flexibly configured to create a multifunctional production line.