HBD Packaging’s Rajiv Bhargava felt compelled to add carton printing capacity as soon as possible, despite the market being highly competitive with wafer thin margins. K&B has committed to delivering the press in a four-month time frame to HBD’s Greater Noida plant, and it should arrive in time and be commissioned for the annual holiday season peak demand for cartons. Bhargava suggests that the slightly larger format press with high automation would help in increasing the productivity of some of the larger litho–laminated two-piece cartons that could be moved from 2-ups to 4-ups. At the same time, some carton layouts could go from 4-ups to 6-ups.
“Carton runs are becoming shorter,” he says, “And for this, the automated makeready and plate changing features on Rapida 106 are very important.” Although the press is ready for UV curing, the cassettes or lamps will be imported later.
HBD was one of the first printers to install a new 7-color plus coater press with LED curing for the interdeck ink units, and Bhargav says that LED will again be evaluated for the new press, although the prices of LED inks are still uneconomical. “Customers are not willing to pay a bit extra for more environmentally friendly UV curing,” he says, while still hoping that as these inks become popular for sheetfed offset, they will become more viable as well.
To make way for the new press, HBD’s earlier Manroland 7-color plus coater UV press which was imported second hand several years ago, is up for sale and will be taken out. The new presses including the Mitsubishi 6-color plus coater and the recently imported RMGT 7-color plus coater with LED curing remain in the pressroom as does a Heidelberg CD102 6–color plus coater UV press.
HBD has grown steadily in the past decade, and at an exceptional rate after the COVID–19 pandemic. It has continuously added converting equipment such as micro-fluted corrugation and lamination machines for litho-laminated cartons as well as automated foiling, die-cutting, folder–gluer machines. The company has added capacity for luxury cartons as well. An automatic window patching machine with hot creasing is also on order.
Naresh Khanna is again a judge for The Sustainability AwardsThe carton market is growing and leading converters need to keep up with the SKUs and volumes of their customers. Bhargava notes that while some other investments may have to be on the back burner for the immediate time being, it was necessary to be in time for the upcoming season with several customer commitments already in place. “The window of opportunity is small and one must seize it with investments in technology.”
