Finishing & Screen Printing
Italian folding carton manufacturer IVAL uses large-format press from Heidelberg to manufacture premium packaging
Wednesday 10. July 2013 - First Speedmaster XL 145 in Italy
Comprehensive tests satisfied stringent requirements for productivity and quality
Best gloss results on the market in inline primer/UV production
Further growth planned – production soon to start in new building
Maximum productivity and quality were the order of the day when Italian packaging print shop Litocartotecnica IVAL S.p.A (IVAL) set out to invest in a new large-format press. After carrying out comprehensive tests on machines from a range of suppliers, the company opted for the Speedmaster XL 145 from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). The seven-color press with dual-coating configuration and UV technology – the first of its type in Italy – is currently being installed at the print shop’s new building in Mantova, near Verona, where it will be run alongside two presses from another German manufacturer. “We had put together tricky jobs with three different brown shades,” explains Nicola Bernini, who owns IVAL. “The Speedmaster XL 145 printed these applications at a speed of 15,000 sheets per hour and produced consistent and stable high-quality results. In other words, it did exactly what industrial packaging printing requires.” The press is elevated, equipped with a logistics system, and incorporates countless automation components designed to deliver the shortest possible makeready times. These components include the inline spectrophotometric measurement system Prinect InpressControl, which regulates color and register on the fly, thus ensuring that production can continue to run efficiently despite frequent job changes. This also significantly reduces paper waste, which translates into a major cost saving, particularly in the premium packaging sector, and supports the print shop’s environmental commitments.
IVAL was established in 1954 and currently has a workforce of 120 employees who handle print jobs for prestigious Italian food manufacturers. The company specializes in the use of low migration quality (LMQ) inks that are designed not to leach into foodstuffs. Average runs at the company amount to 12,000 to 13,000 sheets with grammages of between 290 and 400 grams per square meter. Employees work in two shifts.
Best gloss results on the market in inline primer/UV production
“To help us gain an extra edge on the competition and offer our customers products that are finished to an elegant standard, we opted for UV specifications,” says Paolo Giacomobono, head of production at IVAL. “The Speedmaster XL 145 currently produces the best gloss results that we can get in inline primer/UV production.” Top results are obtained by maximizing the distance that the UV coating on the primer travels before it is cured by the UV dryers – and the Speedmaster XL 145 has the longest dryer section of any large-format offset printing press on the market. These high gloss results are also achieved at high production speeds.