Bobst hosted a gravure printing and laminating virtual event from its Competence Center in San Giorgio Monferrato, Italy, on 10 February 2021, which enabled attendees to witness the future of flexible packaging production.
“The event demonstrated how Bobst latest advances in gravure and lamination are shaping the future of flexible packaging through solutions built around automation, digitalization, connectivity and sustainability. This creates value for all users along the interconnected value chain, elevating packaging quality and making printing and converting operations more agile, sustainable and profitable,” explained Davide Garavaglia, managing director of Bobst Italia.
The machines showcased were the Expert RS 6003 gravure press and the multi-technology Nova D 800 laminator.
Job changeover on the gravure press was completed in under 14 minutes with only 95 m of waste. The impressive results have been achieved using two gravure jobs printed in oneECG Bobst extended color gamut process allowing to print a 14c job (CMYK + 9 spot colors + white) with just 7 fixed process colors and unique automation features – from the TAPS pre-setting at the touch of a button through to the highly flexible Flex Trolley, and the automatic pre-washing system.
Matching the remarkable gravure press performance, the Nova D 800 also demonstrated its high-level capabilities together with the unique flexo trolley, the flat tunnel design and the driven rollers. The lamination job demonstrated was processed at 400 m/min coating the solvent-based adhesive directly on the 8 μ alu-foil substrate, at speed with flawless optical quality and web-handling.
The PET-Alu-foil substrate combination highlighted the capabilities of the Bobst compact laminator to handle complex applications typical of the demanding food, beverage, cosmetic and pharma segments, such as retort pouches, thanks to features that are usually the domain of higher range machines.
Bobst presented a brand-new gravure press. The Vision RS 5003, which is an evolution of the very successful RS 5002 and Nova RS 5003 series, now featuring speeds up to 450 m/min with fully automated job changeovers at production speed.
Bobst technologies and novelties can and will continue helping converters to answer the new industry requirements in a profitable manner. The use of bio-based and polyolefin substrates, job customization, shorter runs and faster time-to-market, set new challenges for the actors along the value chain, for which Bobst is already providing solutions.
“At Bobst we are best placed to support the industry transformation and overcoming the challenges now and in the future. We have all technologies for production of flexible packaging so we can approach each challenge from an end-to-end view and develop the solution that best fits the given requirements at every stage of the production process,” concluded Davide Garavaglia.