Dharmesh Zaveri
GENERAL MANAGER, HOTPACK PACKAGING
A joint presentation of an innovative solution to improve the flexible packaging lamination process through the in-line coating weight measurement system, gScan. This solution enables significant savings in makeready waste as well as adhesive volume. We have tried to keep sustainability as our prime agenda, and one we are speaking with Comexi and Synaptic because of our future investment into closed-loop technologies and the advantages we derive from them.
We have 14 manufacturing locations by the end of the year we might have two more. We have 28 branches right now and we will also increase these. We have 48 cell centres to dispense products to our consumers, and close to 4,000 products and growing; 25,000-plus customers and 3,300- plus employees of 30 nationalities, and a fleet of more than 300 vehicles. You would have seen a lot of Hotpack vans moving around.
We are looking at any kind of innovations, so any new product development activity would have sustainability as our prime agenda, and within the sustainability part we are looking at recycling, we have been working on how we reduce waste and our carbon footprints, we are trying to bring more efficiency, so our investments are more on the automation side. This makes it easier to take decisions in advance so we can bring down the cost of production and products. How we provide consumer convenience is part of the innovation we are talking about.
Aleix Mas
SALES DIRECTOR, SYNAPTIC
There is a lot of new technology in films and adhesives towards barriers to recyclable products, but the machine itself and laminator itself, from a mechanical point of view, is more or less the same as it has been for many years. So, we tried to find a solution to adapt to any laminator in the market which is able to reduce waste and have very good quality control. When we talk about waste in lamination, we are not talking about adhesives and substrates, we are talking about whatever has been done before, including printing, the first substrate, pre-press and ink, and this cost comes up to 97%.
We take a very basic laminate, let’s say a BOPP with one shift of eight hours, a cost of €30,000 for running the machine, and if we go for a triplex with the more high-performance film or aluminium or metallised substrate, we can even go up to €50,000. To solve the problem, we, first of all, looked at an excess of adhesives, or a lack of adhesives, and of course wrong mixing ratios. If the two components are not mixed correctly, we may have a big problem with delamination.
These are problems that can be solved with our technology. We can solve these problems very easily with our gScan, an automatic inline coating with a measurement that will give in the real-time gramme per square meter that we are applying in any movement or any position of the machine so the operator knows what is happening. We will reduce around 10% of the consumption of adhesives. Jointly with Comexi we have developed this and integrated it into our common software.
Oriol Robert
AREA SALES MANAGER, COMEXI
Based on the integrated electronics that we have and the exclusive agreement with Synaptic, Comexi is the only one who can provide the totally automated closed-loop system for adhesive management. When the sensor reads the glue application on the film, the screen will show the values and system that will automatically adjust the quantity of the glue. There is no need to oversize the quantity of glue, so there is a good cost saving, no need to stop the machine to check the grammage, Productivity will increase and the client will never reject the reels, so maximum quality is achieved.