Karlville’s technology center shows 20 years of innovation

In the 20 years since starting their business, former college mates John Price and Raul Matos have turned Karlville from a small manufacturing company to a leader in converting technology.

Today, Karlville has a worldwide footprint with sales and support centers dotting the globe and manufacturing partners in France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan and the US. Based in Miami, the company recently opened the doors to its new headquarters and technology center to celebrate two decades in business.

Karlville built its brand on shrink sleeve converting technology, but has since diversified into pouching, lamination machines, slitting and inspection, spout inserting and pouch fill.

‘This is something we’ve been working at for a long time,’ said Karlville president John Price at the opening of the technology center in Miami on June 15. ‘It’s been a long time and an incredible journey. We’ve got to travel the world and meet lots of incredible people.’

Price and Matos started Karlville in 1996 with a converting focus. Ten years later, they entered the packaging segment with the acquisition of Scheidegger and CEFMA. Another decade on and another big change has arrived.

New partnerships

Karlville recently announced a ‘game changing’ partnership with HP that Matos says will ‘revolutionize package printing.’ Karlville and HP inked a deal in which Karlville, as the first HP-certified Pack Ready provider, will drive the development of the HP Indigo Pack Ready laminator for the flexible packaging market.

HP Indigo Pack Ready is a set of post-print converting options for HP Indigo digital presses that provides zero cure time lamination while instantly creating a strong bond between the digitally printed substrate and Pack Ready laminate film. It enables digital converters to print, laminate and pack on demand.

The technology will change the way converters convert short runs, according to Matos. ‘The next two years I believe you will see high growth with Pack Ready,’ he said. ‘This will be huge.’

In the joint announcement revealing the partnership, HP Indigo general manager Alon Bar Shany said: ‘The HP Indigo Pack Ready laminator by Karlville opens new opportunities for HP Indigo narrow web customers to extend their businesses into the flexible packaging market. The new offering enables high performance flexible packaging applications such as retort – a dream of many digital flexible packaging converters for many years.’

On nine stops around the 60,000 sq ft space during the open house, Karlville showcased its machinery for laminating, slitting and inspecting, pouch spout inserting, filling and cap, and multipacks with handles in addition to a thermal pouch making machine.

Karlville has a line of thermal pouch making machines and its Thermal KJ-DR-SUP-400 unit that was on display features dual roll unwind with print registration system that enables narrow web printers to produce three-side seal and stand-up zipper pouches to 400mm in height from two printed webs.

The thermal pouch making machine is an avenue for narrow web label converters looking to enter the growing flexible packaging market, which is expected to reach 114 billion USD by 2020.

Said Matos: ‘I’m excited. It is the first time I really see that the narrow web people have a chance to go after this business and do what they do best: high quality short run. It gives them a chance to go after the flexible packaging market.’