Geostick, producing about 16M m² material a year, supplies the food, beverage, chemical and logistics markets, mainly for the Dutch market.

Cees Schouten, plant manager at Geostick, explains why the installation of their first ever servo press was a milestone in the company’s 82-year history: “The Nilpeter FA-4 helps us meet the market expectations perfectly, for more flexible supplies of shorter order volumes, and a wider range of packaging formats. It puts us at the cutting edge of narrow-web converting, thanks to its capacity for outstanding quality on virtually every narrow-web format, incredibly fast job changeovers, user-friendliness and inclusion of many added-value processes in-line.”

SERVO DRIVE – OPTIMUM QUALITY ON ALL SUBSTRATES
The 16½” (420 mm) wide FA-4 UV-flexo press at Geostick features delamination - relamination stations, cold-foiling and an automatic Turret slitter-rewinder. A fully servo-driven system, it has independent drives on each press, constantly maintaining uniform tension and precise registration, to +/- 50μm, at speeds of up to 170 m/min. In this way, the problem of slippage when converting unsupported film and thick board products, is eliminated, and optimum quality is maintained on substrates ranging from 20 to 350 μm thickness.

"The FA-4's servo-power capability makes conversion of the numerous different substrates simplicity itself. Not only does the press run like clockwork, but it achieves the desired tolerances in minimal time - and delivering total quality within 50 metres of the production run. This is also helping us to significantly reduce the material waste burden," comments Cees.

The modular slot in-slot out configuration allows printing sleeve changeover on an eight-colour job in just an hour; moreover, redundant units can be set up during production. According to the company, job runs of even a few hundred metres are viable, as a result of this.

COMPETING IN NEW HIGH-VALUE MARKETS
Due to the installation, Geostick is gaining orders for flexible packaging products, especially pouches, popular in the food, beverage and pet foods sectors. Delamination-relamination facilities also enable Geostick to meet growing demand in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries for more sophisticated multi-layer labels. These provide extra information, often to meet more stringent health and safety regulations. Tear-off multi layer labels, also produced on the press, are used in logistics applications.

Longer runs are smoother too, as the infeeding unwinder takes coils up to 40" diameter, thus allowing as much as 4000 metres’ changeover-free production. It is also capable of high speeds when performing the finishing in-line - Geostick is converting rolls into labels, matrix-stripped and ready for application, at a rate of almost 5,000 metres per hour. So smooth is the whole operation, only one operator is required for the press.

Automated calibration reduces manual input to merely data entry of key material / component parameters, reducing error-risk and saving time further; the increasing number of repeat jobs the Cees and his team deal with, can be recalled instantly.

Cees added: “The FA-4 really is a rock of reliability in the most challenging of circumstances, and without doubt, does great credit to flexo printing as a whole.”