Sushant fast-tracks its production cycle with refurnished Heidelberg press

Along with the recently installed Heidelberg eight-colour + double coater; the company houses five Heidelberg presses which include two-colour, four-colour, five-colour and six-colour UV coating machines. 

Under the pre-press segment, Sushant Packaging has a complete range of solutions from TechNova. Its post-press comprises of three Bobst die-cutters, Lila pasting machine by Bobst and others with three semi-automatic corrugation machines.

The machine has been working for the past 10 years with and it currently has a speed of 10,000 sheets/ hour.

While doing MetPET jobs on the six-colour UV machine; one has to print base-white, CMYK and drip-off. So, when the jobs consist of a special colour along with the CMYK, the company had to run it in the second pass. With the eight-colour machine, the same job can be done in a single pass.

Shrikant Nagmote, managing director of Sushant Packaging, said, “In a two-pass job, inspecting the quality of the complete print after one pass is not possible. When we inspect the sheet after the second pass and the error is in the first pass then the whole printing process has to be restarted. This leads to delays in the turnaround of the jobs and huge amounts of wastage.”

In this eight-colour Heidelberg, gloss as well as matter coating can be done in a single pass. Nagmote said, “There are some jobs where the complete carton is in matte but the image of the product on the carton is in gloss. These jobs can be performed in a single pass which is rare in a conventional offset press.”

To understand how the press efficiency has improved after the installation, Nagmote said that for a 12-hour shift, a 48,000 sheets job used to take two days as it used to be a two-pass job. After the installation of eight-colour Heidelberg, the same job gets completed within a single shift in one-pass.

A feature of the press that impressed Nagmote was the perfect registration. “Generally, a 10-year-old press faces registration problems, which is nowhere to be seen with this Heidelberg press. We are able to achieve perfect registration with this machine.”

Commenting on their decision to opt for Heidelberg, Nagmote added, “We have the experience of using Heidelberg machines, continuous service support and less maintenance of the Heidelberg press is what makes us invest in Heidelberg each time. Also, Heidelberg provides spare parts within a short period of time. One can get the parts within eight days from Germany itself.”

Sushant Packaging is in plans of investing in a single-colour gravure machine for special jobs requiring golden letters printed on the cartons instead of hot or cold foiling.  Since it has upped the printing capacity, Sushant Packaging will soon add equipment to its finishing unit, including a Bobst die-cutter and folder-gluer.