Yellowstone Plastics invests in KBA-Flexotecnica Evo XG

The investment has been made owing to demands for extra capacity and flexibility. This is Yellowstone Plastics’ first KBA press. The new press is scheduled to arrive at Yellowstone’s expanded facility in Idaho Falls, Idaho at the beginning of 2017, and will be operational shortly after.

Daniel Mueller, president and CEO of Volm Companies, explained: ‘Due to our growth, our firm is being asked to take on additional capacity while our customers are seeking faster turnaround and more high-end, life-like designs on their flexo packaging products.

‘The trend is toward more than simple 6-color line printing for 8- to 10-color process work. Rather than just printing a potato on the pouch, we’re printing an image of the family that grew the potatoes or the field where they were grown. This is an important capability for us to have for our core industry of potato farmers as well as our lawn and garden clients. We felt the Evo XG would deliver on all accounts.’

Mueller and his team were also impressed with KBA’s press automation capabilities, and its management team’s ability to customize the press. Due to Yellowstone Plastics’ customers that require shorter lead times, Mueller expressed interest in press automation to bring the press up to print faster, decrease downtime and reduce waste. His team was also excited about KBA-Flexotecnica’s preventive maintenance programs available from the North American Dallas headquarters. The scheduled KBA-Flexotecnica’s preventive maintenance program is available for all KBA customers in North America.

The Flexotecnica Evo XG 10-color press being installed at Yellowstone Plastics features a raft of new technology, including an operating concept that facilitates minimal start-up times when changing jobs. The patented auto impression (AIF) and user-friendly register control keep start-up waste to a minimum. Meeting the challenge to speed turnaround time and reduce costs, Yellowstone Plastics chose time-saving components like the Speedy Clean automatic wash-up system and in-line viscosity control with InkSpec viscometers, auto-impression setting and click-and-drag zero-waste registration, along with numerous quality control options such as a 100 percent inspection camera and in-line color control.

‘We pursued a very extensive process to choose our next flexo press,’ Mueller added. ‘After five presentations on site, we flew to Milan to visit the KBA-Flexotecnica headquarters to put the press through some print trials. After our lead engineer got a look into the press and liked what he saw, we made the decision to purchase the KBA-Flexotecnica Evo XG over the competitors.’