How Ramdoot Packaging increased carton productivity

The company had three local made folder-gluer but in the 50cm size. “Since the three machines could not handle bigger size cartons, we had to fold and glue manually. This took time,” said Pragnesh Patel, a director at Ramdoot.

A simple calculation showed that a person employed to fold and glue cartons would complete around 500 cartons in an hour. If the lock-bottom feature was to be added, that number would drastically fall. A typical run of carton jobs at Ramdoot is in the range of 1,000, 2,500 or 5,000. This means the company would either need to employ 10 employees to get 5,000 cartons work done in an hour or get an employee to work for 10 hours. “With the Bobst Ambition we are able to complete the job in flat 30 minutes,” says Patel. “We have not only saved time, but reduced expenses on labour. It has enabled us to move the stock out for delivery in quick time.”

The Bobst Ambition 76 is capable of folding-gluing cartons at a maximum speed of 70,000 per hour, and when running the lock-bottom feature, it is capable of a maximum speed of 35,000 cartons per hour.

Patel started Ramdoot in 2002 in the company of his brother, Pradeep, as a screen printing unit. The duo operated from their home, printing stationery items. They added a cutting machine too.

In 2005, Patel invested in a 15,000 sq/ft site in Gandhinagar’s Kalol taluka; moved the screen printing unit and the cutting machine, and named the company, Ramdoot Packaging. “We also started receiving carton jobs from our existing customers,” he added.

In 2007, the company brought its first offset machine, a single-colour press. Since then, it has been upgrading its infrastructure, including setting up an in-house die-making unit and specialised in cartons for the pharma industry.

“We gang the carton jobs, producing 65 jobs a day. So each die may have 10, 12 or 15 jobs,” said Patel. “It takes three hours to make one die. We used to produce the dies in the city, and we had one person only to transport the dies up and down.”

For Ramdoot, which produces more number of jobs, getting the dies on the machine became critical. “If you can produce the dies quickly, you can produce the jobs quickly,” said Patel.

And he added, Ramdoot’s ganging of packaging jobs, is a unique business module. “You can get converters who can produce five-lakh cartons, but few who can do different carton sizes with value additions like drip-off, embossing, foiling, and UV varnishing, among others.”

Besides the Bobst Ambition, the Rs 12-crore company has a design studio; a platemaking unit, a five-colour printing press, Sakurai Oliver 72; plus single-colour for offline varnishing; a laminating machine; Heidelberg’s analogue platen machine modified for foiling, embossing; one big foiling machine; and two manual punching machines, and a Maxima die-punching machine.

“We opted for Maxima because it’s affordable, and meets our requirement. The company is located in Ahmedabad, so servicing is quick,” concluded Patel.

Patel brothers with the Sakurai Oliver 72 press