Setting a lofty two-year goal of boosting its annual output capacity to a billion folding cartons per year, Boehmer Box of Kitchener, Ontario has initiated an investment spree including the installation of Canada’s first Agfa :Dotrix digital inkjet packaging press along with the purchase of a six-colour 56-inch KBA Rapida 142.
Mark Caines, president and COO with Boehmer Box, pictured with the company’s new six-colour KBA Rapida 142. Photo: John Hryniuk.
In the last two years, as sales increased by 20 percent, Boehmer Box has moved to a 24-by-7 operation and was still facing capacity challenges in its core folding carton business. “The easiest way to address this is through more efficient equipment to give us higher throughput per hour on the same basic footprint,” says Mark Caines, president and COO. “The KBA replaces two older presses, and in doing so increases capacity by 250 million cartons annually. The :Dotrix digital packaging press brings us into the digital era to meet the changing needs of consumer packaged goods companies.”
The new :Dotrix press forms the core of a new sister company, LYFT Visual, which Boehmer launched in January. “We had to ask ourselves where the industry is headed. Commercial printing has moved toward a digital and variable environment. This is slowly moving into packaging. We could see digital was on the horizon, and the need to stay abreast of our customers’ needs for samples, short runs and POP materials to support some of the cartons we produce for them. The trend to digital packaging presses will parallel commercial print to some degree,” suggests Caines.
LYFT Visual press operator, Luis De Oliveira, checks one of the flexo towers on the Agfa :Dotrix digital packaging press. Towers positioned before and after the inkjet print heads can pre-coat stock for specific effects. The press can print up to 25.6 inches wide by any length. Photo: Patricia Trusty
The digital inkjet press sets Boehmer Box apart in the Canadian folding carton market, at least for the time being, and allows consumer packaged goods customers to be more nimble and flexible in their retail product offering.
With the :Dotrix press, LYFT Visual will initially target short-run carton and sampling where brand owners want 10 copies of 20 different cartons, variable print applications, Web-to-print, as well as the POS support market. “With our strong graphics management system, brand owners can easily repurpose their packaging graphics into signage and display materials, and produce these quickly on the digital press.”
The installation of the 56 inch, six-colour KBA press addresses the company’s core market, 85 percent of which is private-label food packaging that calls for recycled boxboard with very high graphic quality. The balance of Boehmer’s customer base consists of name-brand food producers. The new press, equipped with inline coating, is UV prepped and a curing unit can be added when required.
Boehmer Box press operator, Kevin Benson, and team leader, Pete Dinsmore, with the company’s new six-colour KBA Rapida 142 press equipped with automated makeready technology and a printing speed of 15,000 sheets/hour. Photo: Patricia Trusty
“Our goal in buying the KBA Rapida 142 offset press was to drive productivity with automatic makeready and higher machine speeds to 15,000 sheets per hour,” says Caines. “Reducing downtime has always been critical, but even more so when the typical press run is now 13,000 sheets as opposed to 20,000 three years ago.”
[More details on Boehmer Box’s recent investments will be featured in the upcoming issue of Canadian Printer.]
