Pharmaceutical and IT packaging manufacturer Catalent Pharma Solutions has installed a Bobst Cartonpack GT at its Dublin plant to meet increased turnover in high volume packaging, a new market for the company. The investment follows a review of the company’s business strategy.
Diarmuid Wilson, Business Development Director at Catalent Pharma Solutions, said, “We installed a ten colour litho press late last year and it has been extremely successful in bringing in new, high volume, business, both from Ireland and from around Europe. We are now investing downstream and this investment is based around high flexibility and quick turnaround.”
The newly installed Bobst Cartonpack GT is an autopacker for carton folder-gluers. The unit can pack up to 8 rows and 6 layers of cartons into corrugated transport outers, packing from left to right, or right to left. The Cartonpack GT can be programmed to store the packing parameters of repeat jobs, speeding up make-readies, and can handle a wide range of straight-line, 4-corner and 6-corner boxes, packing them either on the crease or their closing flaps. At Catalent, the Cartonpack GT has been fitted to a Bobst Media 100 folder-gluer, one of three Bobst folder-gluers on site.
“Our plan is to double our output over the next two years, with a large part of the increase being in high volume commercial work, which is very different to our established short run work. The Bobst Cartonpack GT will give us the capacity, flexibility and quick response we need to satisfy both our existing short-run customers and new, high-volume clients,” said Diarmuid Wilson,
To ensure carton quality, the Cartonpack GT has been designed to apply minimal pressure to each carton, so avoiding the possibility of marking, and the machine also features a laser counting device to ensure accurate fulfilment. An optional random sampling device completes the QA features.
Catalent staff first saw the Cartonpack GT at Bobst’s Competence’09 open house in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“At Competence we saw that all of the styles of carton we manufacture could be autopacked using the Cartonpack GT and we were particularly impressed by its speed, flexibility and ease of set up. We also liked the fact that there are no hydraulics. Everything is powered by drives, which not only makes it more responsive, it also means there is no possibility of leaked hydraulic fluid reaching our customers’ cartons, which is the sort of thing that can be hugely impactful on quality assurance,” said Joe Beggs, Production Manager
Catalent is now ramping up production on both the new press and the Cartonpack GT and expects to maximize utilisation from Q1 2010. An additional Bobst folder-gluer and diecutter will be installed to further increase capacity.
Paul Walters, Bobst Business Manager for Ireland, said, “Catalent have used the Cartonpack GT to exploit the latent capacity in one of their Bobst folder-gluer lines. Other Bobst customers have taken similar approaches, for example adding equipment like the EasyFeeder GT to enable them to get contracts for synthetic or varnished products or using units like the Gyrobox to produce speciality boxes and envelopes.”
3rd February 2010
3rd February 2010
