Automatic roll changing boosts productivity at Chinese converter

Jantan Color is now one of the leading label printing companies in the Yangtze River delta region of China, with annual sales of 100 million USD. In 2013, the company won four awards at the China Global Label Summit, and was named ‘Best business and development model organiser’, with its focus on technology, and eight patents in graphic arts research and innovation.

Its press portfolio includes a Lintec letterpress machine, which was one of the first in China, as well as Gallus and Nuova Gidue flexo lines.

The addition of automatic roll changers supplements its printing capabilities, and has reduced the material waste and production downtime previously caused by manual handling.

Jantan Color currently runs three of its presses non-stop with Martin Automatic equipment. The Gallus press is equipped with the compact model STS splicer and STR rewinder, and two of the Gidue presses are optimized with Martin Automatic’s MBS splicer and LRD automatic rewinder. Martin Automatic equipped its LRD rewinder with a system to wind slit rolls, enabling Jantan Color to produce multiple narrow width label rolls in-line.

The latest Gidue press is used mainly for food packaging, a market into which the company has recently expanded. 

Jantan Color general manager Kevin Huang said a manual roll change was occurring every 27-30 minutes for 2,000m-long rolls, and took at least five minutes each, with five more minutes to check the color and registration. This wasted more than 20 percent of press production time, and caused a huge loss.

‘The Martin roll change systems greatly reduced our downtime’ Huang said. ‘The improvement in production efficiency is obvious, especially for run lengths above 10,000m. Martin Automatic splicers and rewinders have nearly doubled throughput on our flexo presses.

‘Our food packaging customers demand much larger quantities, requiring the speed and efficiency that can only be gained by automatic roll changes.’

Commenting on his choice of Martin Automatic, Huang said: ‘There are Chinese companies manufacturing similar machines, but for reliability and ease of use the quality of Martin Automatic equipment makes it the best in the industry.  In future, Martin Automatic will be standard fit equipment on our wider, high volume flexo presses, and we are considering fitting Martin Automatic equipment onto our shorter run letterpress lines too.’