A fast track to success?

The marketplace for slitting and rewinding equipment has become something of a battleground. An increasing number of manufacturers and suppliers are entering the arena and, inevitably, there are casualties. One UK-based manufacturer, who asked to remain anonymous, admits that it is moving away from offering slitting equipment after it became an "unsustainable proposition" for the business.

"We are seeing more and more companies emerge from Asia and, most of the time, their equipment is sold at prices that we simply can't compete with. I can't comment on the build quality of such equipment, but a company such as ours, that manufactures our own equipment, we are being priced out of the equation," it explains. "For many packaging converters wanting to cut costs, reducing your outlay on capital equipment is one simple way of doing that. However, proposing that a quality machine will pay itself back in two years, which we think is reasonable, no longer sits with a large number of customers. As a result, we are looking to move away from this field and concentrate on other core services."

Increased competition
But increased competition is not a bad thing for the end-user. This has resulted in vast levels of innovation taking place while packaging converters have variety and, in turn, choice when it comes to investing in new slitting and rewinding equipment.

To say it's been a busy 12 months for Atlas Converting would be something of an understatement. In addition to a slew of sales and enquiries for its Atlas and Titan machines during October's K Show, the company also took the opportunity to launch the CW5000 series platform. This complements its CW3600 and CW1040 technology, allowing the company to offer machine widths that range from 2,500mm to 10,400mm, reaching maximum speeds up 1,500m/min.

According to Atlas, it designed the CW1040 series to cope with the ever-increasing speed of film production lines while not solely relying on sustainable, increased running speeds to achieve this. The CW series is also claimed to have faster acceleration and deceleration cycles.

"Compared with a conventional primary film slitter running at 1,500m/min producing rewind lengths of 8,000m, the Atlas CW Series will have a faster rewind cycle, but at only 1,200m/min," the company states.

Elsewhere, the company's Titan SR9 series of secondary slitter rewinders were also presented during the October event. These machines offer rewind reel quality in widths of between 1,650 and 2,250mm and are said to offer 30sec stop times between rewind reel sets.

Improved productivity
"Increasingly, converters of flexible packaging materials are constantly looking at ways to improve productivity and when considering investment in new slitting and rewinding machinery they are looking for features in machine design which will provide this," Roger Astell, communications manager at Atlas Converting tells Converting Today. "The latest Titan SR9 Series of high performance slitter rewinders include two models - the Titan SR9-DT (Dual Turret) slitter rewinder and the Titan SR9-DS (Duplex Shaft) slitter rewinder. The DT model has four rewind shafts, two on each turret, which is designed to maximise productivity."

According to Astell, there have been a number of notable trends influencing the customer's buying decisions in the last 12-18 months.

In recent years, he says, trends in flexible packaging have moved towards shorter and shorter runs of printed materials to meet the demand - particularly in food packaging and from the major supermarket retail chains - for on-pack special offers and price incentives.
"Shorter production runs require an increased number of printing and converting jobs, which means increased machine stop-time between jobs. So quicker and easier machine set-up times are required, to minimise machine downtime.

"All of these are factors affecting machine productivity," confirms Astell.

Challenging convention
According to Matthew Godbold, sales manager at Ashe Converting Equipment, the company has also seen significant growth in its customer base from the plastics sector, as evidenced in its strong showing at the K Show.

"Contracts were agreed during the exhibition for our Jade series of individual arm slitter rewinder, as well as the Sapphire S2 slitter rewinder, both of which were on display during the exhibition, running live product," he explains to Converting Today. "We also displayed our Diamond series of slitting and rewinding machines. All of these machines that were displayed during the show were sold to existing customers."

The Jade series from Ashe has been developed for film, primarily biaxially orientated or cast film producers, plain or metallised. The Jade machine can be supplied in various widths ranging from 2m up to the maximum 8.7m width.

Godbold adds: "As with all of our machines, the Jade series has been developed to give our customers an alternative to conventional slitting and rewinding systems that are currently on the market. With this in mind, the machine utilises a linear winding system, with each station being independent from the others. Due to the innovative design of our winding stations, we are able to use a single (driven) common lay-on roller per rewind beam."

Much of Spain'sComexi Group's slitting and rewinding focus in 2013 has centred around its Proslit S2 DT system. This is said to combine cutting and rewinding operation with double turret winding that is claimed to cut the turnaround times on both short and long runs. According to Comexi, the Proslit S2 DT is a productive cutter coupled with a compact layout.

AB Graphic International has just launched Auto Slit, which is a digital knife box that the UK manufacturer says can automate the slitting and set-up for labels and packaging production through an HMI touchscreen interface. This system is designed to run in conjunction with the company's Digicon, Omega and Vectra label converting lines.

According to Andrew Noble at AB, the Auto Slit enables converters to cut the time and level of material waste associated with such processes. "The operator simply enters the job parameters into the system and the knives are automatically positioned in seconds. For example, a job requiring 15 knives can take up to five or 10 minutes to set manually, Auto Slit permits this to be done in less than 50 seconds without handling the knives, which also increases operator productivity," he adds.

Atlas installation at Turkish packaging firm

Manufacturer: Atlas Converting Equipment
Customer: Poyraz Ambalaj
Installation: 1,350mm wide Titan ER610 compact slitter rewinder

Atlas installed the Titan ER610 compact slitter at the flexo and gravure business, making an "immediate impact" on production.

"In the short space of time since installation, it has proved to be so successful that we have been able to divert all materials from two existing slitting machines to the new Titan ER610 slitter, which can easily cope with this capacity," says Ahmet Ruchan, plant manager at Poyraz Ambalaj.

The Titan ER610 slitter can handle a wide range of flexible materials including plain, printed, coated or metallised film from 20 to 200 micron and a broad range of laminates and paper from 30 to 200g/m².