Eltromat - everything under control

“Optimizing printing processes” is eltromat's business. Since 1960, the company has supplied press manufacturers and printers worldwide with specialized electronic processing equipment to ensure maximum efficiency and quality in their operations. Its modular product range embraces drive systems, register controls, and systems for print viewing, inspection, colour control and measurement, as well as workflow. These are used in rotogravure as well as flexo, offset and screen printing.

Dr Gunter Tautorus, ceo, and the second generation of his family owned company, told Converting Today: “We have always had good co-operation with the OEMs and especially independent converters. Register control is our core business, but we have developed a broad product range. We have many developments on which we want to focus. More than 10 per cent of our sales turnover is re-invested in our R&D resources. The basis of our success is our ability to develop and build electronic equipment to satisfy the requirements of the printers.”

He stressed: “It is vital to incorporate full knowledge of the packaging material and the equipment in each application into our systems. It's all about understanding the customer's requirements and training their staff to get the full benefit of our equipment. Training is a major part of the investment for the converter: the operator remains a key factor in every case. As production lines become more complex, there's more for operators to handle.

Back-up

“Service and spares back-up is also critical. This was part of our growth path, building up the service network. It is an important asset to our business. We differentiate from competitors in high quality, reliability and close co-operation with customers - understanding their requirements. We have many competitors for the same products, but only a few for high quality and high performance.”

He was happy with eltromat's performance in the market so far this year. “There is more investment in the industry, so more work for us. Overall it's more non European companies and markets that are supporting us. Europe is suffering over-capacity and low investment in new presses. We also see the effects of consolidation, with some shutdowns. Commodity printers are under severe pressure from low cost sites in Eastern Europe and the Middle East - they are real competitors on costs. We hope there will be a chance for us to supply some of them as their markets develop.

“Converters are generally under more pressure than commodity printers,” he added - “pressure to make packaging of better quality and more attractive - and to keep it cheap. Many companies are moving to do more than just printing - extending into packaging design, for example. Perhaps the trend to offering a complete production service, instead of just printing, is the way for European converters to go.”

Exports account for at least 50 per cent of eltromat's business. “It's closer to 75 per cent in the final destination of machines through OEMs,” Gunter Tautorus revealed. “Italy is an important market for us. So is Spain, where there is a strong economy. Germany has less investment, but it’s still an important base for us. Eastern Europe is difficult to quantify - we hope to see more investment there, but we have many systems there already.

“The USA is dominated by flexo, so that's a market for us. Consolidation there is happening at an even higher speed than in Europe. In gravure, we have many customers in Southeast Asia and India,” he added. It will be interesting when Asian OEMs appear in Europe, although service will be a problem. “It's tough for European press manufacturers; systems are more software based than 10 years ago. In fact, roughly two thirds of the development is in software now.”

Summarizing, he noted: “The main trends are for shorter runs and special products - we have just supplied a full system for a 19 colour press going to the US. There is also more automation, but it still has to be user friendly. In future there will be more automatic control units on presses, and for measuring quality and recording data. There is increased automation around CI flexo presses. We have a development for fast set-up that will soon be released to the market. We need to close the loop as much as possible with all these automatic systems, so that customers get the full benefit from them.”

Workflow will be growing for gravure packaging, he suggested, and “it will be interesting to see how far developments for offset print will come into converting. There is a lot of activity in this area.”