At Plastindia 2018, Pelican introduced the Cerutti R-982 rotogravure printing press manufactured at its engineering facility in Rajkot, Gujarat. Pelican signed a strategic agreement with Cerutti to manufacture Cerutti’s rotogravure press in India. Under the terms of the agreement, Pelican will use Cerutti’s manufacturing technology and design to produce rotogravure presses. The rotogravure press displayed at Plastindia was the first machine rolled out after the agreement. “The rotogravure press that we are displaying at Plastindia has already been sold to a customer. Another order is in the pipeline, and we are very much optmistic about breaking that deal too,” said Gautam Mehra of Reifenhäuser, the marketing partner of Pelican.

Cerutti Packaging Equipment (part of Cerutti Group) is a company fully controlled by the Cerutti family and is one of the key suppliers in the converting industry, while Pelican is the largest rotogravure press manufacturing company in India.

With speeds up to of 450 m/minute and maximum web width of 1300 mm, Cerutti R-982 has operational controls at each station. “It is a new generation rotogravure press led by ELS technology,” said Mehra. “By perfect integration of advanced electronics and ergonomically designed mechanical components, the press is designed to deliver optimum performance, better operational ease, faster print register response, higher productivity, better print quality, less waste, optimizing ink solvent and energy consumption, faster job changeover etc.”

The press allows full process control for the drying operation to reduce energy consumption and avoid solvent retention in the printed substrates. “The press comes with an innovative, highly efficient drying system, which allows to achieve better heat and mass transfer by switching from the standard nozzle to arrays of circular impinging jets 3D holes on the printed side and 2D holes on the backside of the web,” concluded Mehra.