Obaly Morava is a CUTTING EDGE INVESTMENT IN CZECH REPUBLIC A REPORT BY DANIEL BRUNTON.

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1 A REPORT BY DANIEL BRUNTON. OBALY MORAVA ROLLS OUT NEW FOSBER CORRUGATOR AND THE WORLD S FIRST HP T400 SIMPLEX DIGITAL PRE-PRINT PRESS AS IT LOOKS TO EXPAND ITS POSITION IN THE LOCAL MARKET CUTTING EDGE IN CZECH REPUBLIC Robert Seay, (Business Development Director, Packaging, Strategy & Market Development at HP), Martin Rehorik, (President, Obaly Morava), and Aurelio Maruggi, (VP and GM of Inkjet High-Speed Production Solutions at HP). Obaly Morava is a privately owned corrugated board producer, established in 1993 in Otrokovice, Czech Republic. The company manufactures a broad range of corrugated products which are sold to the Czech and surrounding markets. Obaly Morava is owned by Martin Rehorik and employs 170 people. Over the last year or so, the company has invested heavily not just in equipment, but also in infrastructure. Mr Rehorik s vision was clear to grow, he needed faster machines and larger factory space to house them. Our aim is to ensure that the corrugated board spends as little time as possible in our factory, he says. Once the paper has been run on the corrugator, we want the sheets printed and converted as quickly as possible and then on the delivery truck for the customer. He continues, We put in place a far-reaching investment plan that would see us more than double our corrugated board output and also enhance our graphics capabilities. We opted for a new Fosber corrugator, a palletless high-rack work-in-progress storage and a world first the HP T400 pre-print 2 INTERNATIONAL PAPER BOARD INDUSTRY

2 ARTICLE HEADING digital press. In the first quarter of 2015, we ll also take delivery of a new Engico two colour 5.0m flexo folder gluer and a Bobst Expertcut die-cutter. These investments are going to radically change the way in which we can do business. Coupled with the new machinery came the need for additional manufacturing space. The main corrugator bay had to be expanded significantly to house the new Fosber corrugator, while the paper reel store had to be increased in height to accommodate more paper stocks. A new, stand-alone factory was built to house the new digital press and down stream coater with enough space for dedicated reel storage and no doubt a second line when the volume requires it. New technology It takes a bold and forward looking company to before anyone else in the industry adopt new technology that can transform the way graphically printed corrugated board is produced. At an Open House during November, Mr Rehorik and the team at Obaly Morava highlighted their latest investments in corrugator and print technology. At the heart of this investment plan, Obaly Morava has taken the leap and is leading the way with short to medium run digital pre-print. They have recently installed HP s first T400 Simplex High Speed Inkjet Corrugated Packaging Solution, which was introduced to the corrugated market during the summer of The market demands and technology available are changing dramatically and I felt that we needed to take a fresh look at how best to meet the changing demands of our customers, demanding individualisation and differentiation from the competition, Mr Rehorik said. I had a vision of what digital pre-print could potentially do for us way back in 2012 and began engaging HP around their T400 digital web press technology and its use for printing of corrugated liners. Back then, HP was not overly active in the corrugated industry and was only evaluating the technology and how it might work. Within about nine months, Obaly INTERNATIONAL PAPER BOARD INDUSTRY 3

3 OBALY MORAVA HAS ALSO INSTALLED A NEAR-LINE COATER SOLUTION THAT CAN BE USED FOR AQUEOUS PRIMING AND OVERCOATING THE PRINTED SUBSTRATE Morava and HP agreed on a path forward to deploy the technology. We evaluated the press and new capabilities HP was working on. We saw that HP was making great progress on many of the key issues we had, including working with coated and lightweight liners, increasing the print quality for packaging, working with longer frame sizes up to 2.7m long (from 1.8m), getting the press speed and productivity up and getting the cost of the print down. In the end, I decided to go forward. As an independent, I was able to make a fast decision, said Mr Rehorik. The HP T400 Simplex High Speed Inkjet Corrugated Packaging Solution being run at Obaly Morava includes a new version of the existing HP High Speed Inkjet T400 Press, which is 1.06m wide, with a single arch, four process colours (CMYK), new HP Priming Agents and aqueous inks. The solution prints on either uncoated or coated liner up to 183m per min (or 11,640 sqm/hr). Obaly Morava has also installed a near-line coater solution from Harris & Bruno that can be used for aqueous priming and overcoating the printed substrate. However, Obaly has left space for moving their existing coater in-line for priming in the future and adding a second coater for overcoating inline. Obaly Morava took delivery of the new line from HP in late June 2014 and officially commissioned the solution, (both the press and coater) at the end of July We are using the solution to provide short-tomedium run, high quality print, with fast turn-around for our customers, explains Mr Rehorik. To accomplish this, we are producing digital preprinted liner with multiple customer jobs back-to-back on the same substrate rolls. We then allocate time on the new Fosber corrugator for producing board with the pre-printed top liner rolls. Smart corrugating The 2.5m full line Fosber corrugator sports an array of supplementary optional features. Most remarkably, it features no fewer than four Fosber Smart 400 quick flute change single facers for the production of quadruple wall corrugated board (9 ply), which is certainly a first for Fosber (and one of very few in the industry). The line is supplied with seven flute cassettes that include C, B, E, F, T flute production and their associated combinations for single, double, triple and quadruple wall production. The corrugator line also includes a Pivab slitter rewinder for the production of rolls of single face open flute that is located between single facer 3 and 4 positions. In addition, a wax applicator on the bottom liner paper has been incorporated to allow the production of fruit and vegetable packaging specifically designated for long term refrigeration. A Sesame tape applicator has been installed between the glue unit and double backer and a ripper tape unit is located at entry to the Twin 400 slitter scorer. 4 INTERNATIONAL PAPER BOARD INDUSTRY

4 FOSBER DEVELOPED A SPECIALISED ROLL STAND AND SPLICER ON THE BOTTOM LINER STATION THAT IS ABLE TO HANDLE BOTH STANDARD FULL WIDTH PAPER 2.5M REELS AS WELL AS TWO SEPARATE NARROW SPLIT ROLLS THAT CAN BE RUN SIMULTANEOUSLY SIDE-BY-SIDE. Specifically for digital To meet the particular requirements of this installation, Fosber also developed a specialised roll stand and splicer on the bottom liner station that is able to handle both standard full width paper 2.5m reels as well as two separate narrow split rolls that can be run simultaneously side-by-side. This particular feature also allows the joint running of two digitally preprinted paper rolls from the HP T400 Simplex press, that are managed as separate orders at the dry-end thanks to the two independent automatic cut-topattern recognition systems fitted on both knife levels. Standard features of the Fosber corrugator include the M2 conventional roll stand and LINK400A splicers which sport automatic tail grabbing that allows reels to be run right down to the very core, minimising waste as well as auto tension control according to actual detected reel diameter, paper width and paper quality. The quadruple level Crest double glue unit has an automatic torque controlled rider roll contact system so that starch and steam consumption are significantly reduced. The Express double backer is fitted with 18 extra large hotplates (equivalent to a conventional 22½ x hotplate The roll stand and splicers can handle two reels at the same time. machine) with three independently controlled heating sections, each able to run from 0.5 to 15 bar steam pressures. Each heating section is complimented with a closed loop condensate recovery system. Two independently driven AC drive motors provide 250KW of pulling power and a variable shoe pressure system provides perfect bond and moisture balance. The dry-end is composed of Fosber s standard 400 gapless order change range of equipment, producing sheet sizes from 500mm to 5000mm in length and in width from 250mm to 2500mm. The Fosber Twin 400 slitter scorer is configured to run a multitude of scoring profiles on back-to-back orders that include offset (normal and reverse), point-to-point, conventional three point malefemale and point-to-flat scoring profiles. The Series 6 heavy duty Master Cut-Off knife optimises the production of short chop lengths at the highest line speeds while the Terminal 400 double down stacker allows very short order cycle capability and optimum stack presentation. Fosber s Syncro complete corrugator control provides the full automation and synchronisation of the corrugator line. Such characteristics include detailed INTERNATIONAL PAPER BOARD INDUSTRY 5

5 production reporting, intelligent fault-finding diagnostics, automatic wet-end and dry-end order change, bridge calibration, splice synchronised splicing, reel-stand monitoring and roll stock management interface. Syncro s total traceability record feature collects and stores historical production and process data for every order run for the last year. Martin Rehorik Change of mindset Going forward, Obaly Morava will work to optimise its processes to maximise the benefits that the new digital press solution with the downstream advantages afforded by the new corrugator offers, provide feedback for improvements and begin to introduce the new capabilities to its customer base. Now that our customers can experience what this new digital press and the corrugator can achieve, we are changing the way many of our customers think. They love the possibility of receiving great quality print, across different substrate and board options, with fast turn-around and for short to medium runs, promotions and versions, said Jan Juricek, Obaly Morava s Marketing Manager. Time will tell how this solution ultimately works for Obaly Morava. 6 INTERNATIONAL PAPER BOARD INDUSTRY