Page 32 - Packaging News Magazine July-August 2018

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DIGITAL PRINTING
Orora looks to the future of
Orora’s Oakleigh manufacturing plant played host to the company’s inaugural Innovation Expo in May, which saw hundreds of customers visit over two days to see the newest frontiers in packaging, among them the latest digital printing technology. Jake Nelson reports.
INCE its spinoff from Amcor in 2013, Orora Group has grown in leaps and bounds, with op- erations in seven countries, more than 6700 staff, and con- sistent growth over the past five years. The packaging giant
has put innovation front and centre in its corporate strategy, and its expo event in May for customers and suppliers showcased just how far that strategy has taken it.
According to Brian Lowe, group GM for Fibre at Orora, this expo proves the manufacturer is serious about re-imagining the packaging industry.
“It’s one thing to say we want to be an innovative company and do things differently, but talk is cheap,” he said. “You can tell anybody any- thing, but when you can physically show them how it works, then you can have a discussion about what it really means to them.”
Nozomi stars in cutting-edge cast
By far the biggest item on display – in both size and significance – was EFI’s Nozomi C18000 digital press for corrugated board. Occupying
Hundreds of Orora’s customers visited the Innovation Expo hosted at the Speciality Packaging business premises.
much of the factory floor on the tour, the Nozomi was already up and run- ning, printing in CMYK plus orange and violet. The two extra stations en- sure 97 per cent coverage of the co- lour gamut, with another station to be installed later this year.
“We’ll also be adding white, so we can print high quality images onto recycled brown board, which for our industry is quite a lot of the materi- al,” said Lowe. “You can lay white down first and then print over the top, which produces more vibrant colour on brown board.”
The Nozomi is capable of printing at 360x720 dpi in a single pass, with a speed of 75 linear metres per min- ute, and can handle boards of up to 1.8 metres x 3.0 metres.
“EFI was the organisation with the fastest machine coupled with the high quality print production that we were looking for,” said Lowe. “It has the most sophisticated digital printing capability available in the world today for corrugated boxes.”
Aside from the Nozomi, the expo featured a wide range of new pack- aging equipment which Orora in-
tends to integrate into its produc- tion processes.
“We’ve been working with a num- ber of our suppliers around the world to look at technologies with capabilities that will suit this mar- ket and help Orora and its customers differentiate themselves.
“That’s what our innovation expo is about – where we’re lifting the constraints in terms of quality of print, speed to market, setup costs, and flexibility to change design and branding at will,” said Lowe.
These new technologies include the Highcon Euclid III laser cutter, capa- ble of processing 1400 sheets per hour without requiring dies or formes; the BCS Boxer, which can create a variety of boxes from flat sheets and is ideal for e-commerce applications; the Limitronic Limitag V6 Customprint in-line digital printer and UR10 in- dustrial robot, which can print vari- able data on constructed boxes; the Accu-Label orbit labelling station, which prints and applies produce la- bels that can adhere to even wet or fuzzy fruits and vegetables; and a Ghelfi tray erector that creates ‘no-
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July-August 2018