Heidelberg Gallus event in ADIKC Pune unleashes the power of Gallus Labelmaster 440

The Label and More event was held on 18-19 December 2019 by Heidelberg/Gallus and Avery Dennison together with knowledge centre partners like Esko, Dupont, Flint, Royal Coat, Rotometrics, Univaco, and Tesa hosting knowledge sharing sessions with the guests. In addition to the knowledge partner topics, Rajesh Gera, AVP, business development, Reliance Industries, made a presentation on PET,  the sustainable packaging material, which Gera said, is also well received by the printers.

According to Ferdinand Rüesch, senior vice president, global key accounts - Gallus, the label market is seeing a demand for wider presses. "As print run lengths are getting shorter resulting in many job changeovers and higher material set up waste, it is critically important to run the label presses more efficiently with minimum waste of resources, mainly material and time.

Moreover, the label printers all over the world, including India have started to demand more diversified applications on label presses covering from self-adhesive labels to mono films (shrinks sleeves, in-mould labels)and cartons. Now we have the Gallus Labelmaster 440 press, which is firmly established in the industry with over 100 installations since its launch two years ago."

Present at the event were more than 80 CEOs operating in flexo, gravure and sheetfed offset segment. “It has been an interesting and very informative two days, because we have been able to share various packaging applications running on the press and at the same time speak to leading label printers and understand their needs and challenges. We have had serious discussions with printers having sheetfed offset presses and who are looking at entering new businesses in both labels or converting cartons by Flexo," said Rüesch.

The Gallus Labelmaster is a gearless and shaftless press with a short web path along with the latest automation-ready for Industry 4.0 – a perfect suit for labels and various other packaging market segment meeting the print needs of the market, The press is available in printing widths of 340mm and 440mm, and can print at a speed of 200 m/min or 656 ft/min.

Narendra Kulkarni of Heidelberg Gallus demonstating the features of the Gallus Labelmaster 440 

According to Samir Patkar, president at Heidelberg India, the reasons for the outstanding success of Gallus Labelmaster is that it addresses the needs and challenges of today’s packaging printer, that is, ensuring the highest efficiency, lowest waste, high flexibility and fastest adaptability to any market changes thus ensuring investment security, competitive edge and higher profitability. "It has the perfect blend to manage both volumes as well as value at the same time."

The press is designed to convert both flexible packaging material as well as carton boards. He added, “When we say value, the press can be configured with a screen printing unit, Gravure print unit, hot foil stamping unit, multilayer,  a die-cutting unit in print position, quick-change front loading die-cutting system and many more to produce premium labels or cartons. All these units are interchangeable. That’s the beauty of the press. It lives the motto at Gallus – Success and Security of the Label Printer.

On the two-day packed event showcased live run of a wide range of substrates catering to different packaging segments. Value-added multi-colour carton printed on 220 gsm board with printing, foiling and special varnish effect at the end converting into individual blanks – all in one pass. Also demonstrated was printing of 50-micron shrink film substrate along with self-adhesive label job with the added print value.

Nirav of Letra Graphics, said, “The two-day knowledge sharing session was quite informative and a nicely organized event from Heidelberg."

Bhrigav Jain of Monarch Graphics, explained, “The multi-substrate printing with coating, finishing in a single pass is quite nice to understand, and technical session with knowledge partners at ADIKC is commendable.

At present, there are five Gallus Labelmaster 440 presses installed in India at Signode in Bengaluru, Mudrika Labels in Mumbai, Huhtamaki in Baddi, and Marks Emballage in Baddi. Another Labelmaster 440 is on its way to a reputed label print house in India.