Heliographic Holdings is a company which understands our requirements very well. We have been using their system for many years and we are quite comfortable with them. What’s important is that they are able to understand us just as well – Arun Pandey, vice president, Afflatus Gravures
Noida-based Afflatus Gravures, one of the country’s largest cylinder-making companies, recently commissioned a new electronic gravure cylinder manufacturing plant in Kolkata. Inaugurated on 16 September 2016, the plant is spread across a 2-acre plot, and has space for ten electronic cylinder engraving lines.
The new plate engraving line fromHeliographic at the Kolkata plant
The installation includes K Walter and Daetwyler Graphics cylinder preparation and finishing equipment and an Ohio Spectrum engraver with the extremely flexible and high quality hybrid technology for simultaneous engraving of high depth, fine text, continuous tone and line work. The entire plant is built with an eye to optimizing both value addition and throughput using automation and precision. “All plating lines, engravers, cylinder finishing machines and polishing machines for gravure cylinders at the Kolkata plant have been sourced from K Walter, Daetwyler Graphics and Ohio—all part of Heliographic Holdings,” says Arun Pandey, vice president, Afflatus Gravures. Afflatus produces flexible packaging cylinders, leather embossing cylinders, decorative cylinders, embossing cylinders and coating rollers, and offers a complete line of solutions from base shell preparation to polishing, housed in their state-of-the-art electronic engraving facility in a centrally air-conditioned, dust-free atmosphere.
Afflatus has been growing rapidly in past years and is a pioneer in bringing new innovations for its customers on a regular basis. Speaking about investing in systems from Heliographic Holdings, Pandey says, “Behind every investment that we make, there is a reason. In order to maintain consistency in whatever we produce, it is of paramount importance that our equipment supplier is within our reach at all times so we can interact with them and convey our requirements as per the industry demands. Our machine suppliers understand our requirements very well. We have been using a variety of machines from trusted and renowned vendors for the last 20 years and we are quite comfortable with them. What’s important is that they are able to understand us just as well.”
In 2015, Afflatus installed an automatic robotic cylinder engraving system at the Noida plant. It’s next automatic robotic system is under installation at Sarigam (Vapi) near Mumbai in Western India and is expected to be commissioned for commercial production from 15 January 2017. The fully automated gravure cylinder making system produces about 60 cylinders a day. “Afflatus always believes in smart technology, which allows enhanced printing capability and meets the demand of gravure and embossing markets and advance anilox rollers. Whenever a company with new technology comes to us, we like to offer them an opportunity to make a point—this is a thought process that runs in the DNA of Afflatus,” he says.
Afflatus’ vision behind the installation of a fully automated gravure cylinder plant is to contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of the packaging industry, with cleaner and greener engraving processes and ecologically balanced print production. Automation and innovative technology can be effective in controlling the environmental damage to a large extent by producing rich quality with high resolution images and finer printed text. The new gravure cell technologies have also made contributions to an array of anti-counterfeit measures so that industrial and packaging printers can opt for security printing or value-addition on a variety of substrates. “These developments and the innovation thought process will not only keep us abreast with the technology, but also increase growth rate in
the current financial year while making us quite optimistic of our opportunity in foreign markets,” concludes Pandey.
