Investing for the future

Saudi food manufacturer Halwani Brothers has invested in a servo-driven Edale Gamma flexo press as it looks for a sophisticated solution to increasingly sophisticated work. David Pittman reports

 

Halwani Brothers is a 60-year-old company operating out of Jeddah in western Saudi Arabia.

 

It manufactures a range of foodstuffs, including dairy and meat produce, sweets, juices and jams as well as Halawa, a dense, sweet confection made using Tahini, itself made from sesame seeds that are cleaned, roasted, peeled and milled into a fine paste.

 

The company is one of the best-known food manufacturers in the Middle East, achieving large growth year-on-year, thanks not only to food production but also the quality of the packaging.

 

Halwani Brothers places a large focus on the packaging of its products alongside their actual manufacture, and decided it needed a more sophisticated solution than its existing printing system, which featured an older Edale E430.

 

The Edale E430 was purchased many years ago and, while still operating around the clock, was not ideally suited to the needs of the company’s production aspirations.

 

So when Halwani moved into a new facility in 2011, it made the decision to invest in new package printing equipment and, as an existing and satisfied user of Edale equipment, turned to the UK press manufacturer to provide it with a sophisticated solution for its sophisticated production needs.

 

This came in the shape of a four-color, 510mm fully servo-driven Gamma flexo printing press (pictured, above).

 

The Gamma is Edale’s fully servo-driven printing and converting system combining fine print quality with features to ensure high-speed changeovers, minimum downtime and minimum wastage.

 

The system features servo drives on each print head providing pre-register, auto-register and print length control features which, when combined with the print head design, ensures job change times and set-up wastage are kept to a minimum, with the ability to perform a full station color change in under 70 seconds.

 

The job storage feature of the Gamma press allows for an infinite amount of production settings to be stored and recalled in the future.

 

In addition, the Gamma’s “Plug & Play” converting section allows users to swap in and out of different converting, laminating, winding or printing options to facilitate the production of added-value products.

 

During installation, the Edale engineer dismantled the E430 machine and then reassembled it again in the new factory where it now stands side by side with the Gamma, representing the Edale of old and the new 21st Century.

 

Mr Bhardawil, production director at Halwani Brothers, said: ‘We found our existing Edale E430 machine to be a very reliable runner but as our production needs became more demanding we decided to invest in a more sophisticated press to meet demands and with that came our decision to purchase the Edale Gamma.

 

‘There was never any doubt that we would pick anything else when we visited the UK and saw a Gamma running in its production environment and were very impressed by the capabilities.’

 

Halwani is not the only Middle East-based printer to have reinvested in Edale press technology in recent times.

 

Kalabarchasb, a successful label printer based in Tehran, has recently installed its sixth and seventh Edale flexo printing presses with the introduction of two new Edale Alphas. The relationship between Kalabarchasb and Edale started when it purchased three Edale machines from the older product range; an E180 and two E250s.

 

As business grew, so did the number of machines and 2008 and 2009 saw it purchase a Beta and an Alpha before purchasing a further two Alphas to bring the total up to seven

 

The Alpha line is Edale’s compact flexographic printing press, capable of converting a wide variety of packaging, label and ticketing substrates. The press has a short web path of just 12m, a compact footprint of 2.5 sq m and quick job change through ease of access.

 

Kalabarchasb is a family business, run by owner Mr Mahboobi and his two sons. Kalabarchasb has visited Edale in the UK on numerous occasions to receive in-depth technical training, ensuring that they are completely up to speed with the Edale presses that they operate.

 

Mr Mahboobi said: ‘I first got to know of Edale at a show it was exhibiting at in Tehran. We had never really considered looking at compact flexo presses then, but were impressed with the machines and the solutions that Edale could offer.

 

‘That is when we purchased our first E180, and E250. Even now, these machines are still in production. However as technology has moved forward, so have we and this is where the introduction of the newer Edale presses came in – we find the Alpha and Beta models so powerful, fast and with 100 percent quality and accuracy capabilities.’

 

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