With orders for food packaging booming, Argentinian carton and flexible packaging, paper label and commercial printing producer Establecimiento Gráfico Impresores needed an immediate but long-lasting laminating solution to fulfill its rise in short orders.

The company looked to Swiss-based BOBST to help find the right machine, which ended up being the new NOVA SX 550 LAMINATOR launched in April 2020. The solventless laminator matched what Establecimiento Gráfico Impresores was looking for with its short order productivity; easy and quick set-up of job parameters within 1 minute; 15 minutes for a complete job changeover; 90 seconds for a transfer roller change; and 5 minutes to complete a fully automatic washing cycle.

“In the current environment, which is somewhat unpredictable, we need the ability to be completely flexible for our customers,” says Marcelo Alejandro Recio, president of Establecimiento Gráfico Impresores. “The NOVA SX 550 LAMINATOR helps us with that flexibility, allowing us to fulfil even more short orders at short notice. We have been very impressed with its productivity and output since it arrived.”

'Plug and Play' Means It’s Working in Days

The company found that one of the benefits of the NOVA SX 550 LAMINATOR — particularly during the current pandemic, which makes time-consuming onsite installations with multiple staff more challenging — is that it’s “plug and play,” meaning it doesn’t require foundations and can be installed in just one week.

“We were really able to test the plug and play solution, and thanks to local technicians and remote assistance from BOBST, we were up and running in a very short space of time,” says Recio. “At a time when we needed the extra machine capacity to stay ahead of customer demand, this simplicity and rapidity was greatly appreciated.”

Flexibility, Agility and Sustainability

BOBST says it developed the NOVA SX 550 LAMINATOR in response to the growing need of brand owners and converters for greater flexibility, agility and sustainability. The company adds that it has been “actively driving industry transformation with the digitalization, connectivity and automation of equipment and services for sustainable production.”

The NOVA SX 550 LAMINATOR features a highly modular design which can be configured with either transfer rollers or sleeves or monolithic/integral rollers. It is designed to accept the majority of existing roller types, enabling converters to use their existing stock of transfer rollers. It handles a wide range of substrates and thicknesses, including thin alu-foil, metallized film and stretchable substrates, from short runs upward.

“There were several features of the machine that appealed to us, but I would highlight its agility for short orders, the fast job changeover, helped by its internal and integrated automatic washing system, and its good process control, which is due to the modular three-column machine concept,” says Recio. “What all of this means in practice is that we can fulfill orders for our flexible packaging customers quickly and with peace of mind that the quality will be consistently high.”

BOBST says the machine was intended to be the ideal production tool when true flexibility is required by converters that expect to be able to deliver on today's countless variety of job applications demands, timely and qualitatively. “Irrespective of job lengths, substrate and adhesive types, this small great machine will increase the user's competitive edge with cost-effective, reliable and sustainable operation,” says the company.

Establecimiento Gráfico Impresores’s purchase of the NOVA SX 550 LAMINATOR follows the company’s investment in other BOBST machines in recent years, including two 20SIX CI flexo presses, two CL 850 laminators, and an 8-color 20SEVEN CI flexo press.

“We consider BOBST a strategic partner in our business. This is the latest of several BOBST machines that we have invested in and it probably won’t be the last,” says Recio. “When you buy BOBST, you don’t just buy the machine, you buy all that comes with it — the guarantee of excellence, the customer service, the commitment to your business. It’s exactly how we work with our own customers, so these are values we recognize and appreciate.”