Not so extreme makeover
St. Paul-based Rayven remakes itself into a versatile coater and contract converter to serve myriad niche markets.
Editor in Chief Mark Spaulding -- Converting Magazine, 2/1/2005
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| Rayven executives include (left to right) director of sales and marketing Rick Mercado, president Joe Heinemann, and plant manager Tom Alberts. |
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| Release liner is converted on Rayven's workhorse 63-in. cantilevered Bobst Titan slitter/rewinder by operator Laura Anderson. |
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| Coater operator Kim Roepke checks out the status of the new 72-in. UV-silicone coater that features a Control Assemblies integrated computer-control system. |
You've also just been using a handful of products converted by Rayven, Inc., but you'd never know it. The St. Paul, MN-based specialty converter coats, laminates, prints and slits a broad range of materials that make their way into an even broader range of everyday products.
Founded in the mid-1950s by the late Gerry Ingalls, Rayven was one of the pioneering converters of pressure-sensitive label constructions. It initially sold plain and metallized p-s Mylar® labels—a fairly unusual product at the time—to local screen and letterpress printers.
Within a few years, Rayven debuted the product that would put it on solid footing for decades. ReproFilm, a thin adhesive-backed film for use in various types of copiers, transfers repetitive images to architectural or mechanical drawings. Sold into the global reprographics market, ReproFilm once made up 80 percent of Rayven's sales and dominated production throughout the 1970s, 80s and early 90s.
But as computers and CAD systems began to largely replace manual drafting, the writing was on the wall. "Many companies, if they exist only to make one product and that product goes away, the companies typically go away, too," says Rayven's current president Joe Heinemann. "We didn't want to do that; we kind of like staying in business."
Diversity breeds success
Today, Rayven's production is roughly 40 percent silicone-coated and other release liners; 30 percent p-s films, foils and papers; and another 30 percent imaging media. ReproFilm is still around—a popular product in Europe—but now accounts for only about 15 percent of sales.
The converter's raw substrate range has widened as well. From two kinds of Mylar, common materials currently coated include biaxially oriented and cast polypropylene, high- and low-density polyethylene, papers and polystyrene.
Heinemann has been with Rayven since 1986. With a background in mechanical engineering, he started out in technical sales, and worked in the laboratory before moving over to manufacturing, and becoming president in 2000.
"The challenge we've had over the past 10 years is to, sort of, remake the company," Heinemann says. Not necessarily an extreme makeover, "We've built on what we know and diversified into other areas," he says.
It's exactly that diversity that makes Rayven unusual for a company its size, Heinemann explains. "We do more things in this one plant than anybody else does. We have six slitters—all different types doing different things. The same with our coaters—they all have different capabilities and the flexibility for quick turnarounds on short- to mid-size runs."
Rayven will typically process only a few hundred thousand sq ft of material before changing over to something completely different. "That's our market niche, our advantage," Heinemann says.
The silent partner
Custom capabilities are another factor in Rayven's successful makeover, according to Rick Mercado, director of sales and marketing. Everything the converter does now is custom-tailored to specific buyer demands. "We do a lot of private-label coated products," Mercado says. "You don't see the Rayven name out there, but we make a lot of that product."
Depending on the product (or the location of the distributor), Rayven's international sales tend to fluctuate. Exports made up only about 5 percent last year in terms of its purely direct ReproFilm business in Europe, but overall exports should be 15-20 percent this year, Mercado says. That shift is coming particularly from some new projects in which Rayven's materials move to Canada before the finished product is sold back into the US.
And while total sales ($10 million in 2004) have been consistently up over the past few years, Mercado says, "They've not grown by something that excites Joe or me. We're not yet where we need to be."
Wider, faster, flexible
Achieving that goal will be easier with the installation last spring of Rayven's fifth coating line. The proprietary 72-in.-wide system, designed to run up to 800 fpm, has the width and high speed to allow Rayven to economically produce larger volumes of UV-cured, silicone release liner (See Coater Closeup).
Rayven has selected GE Silicones (Waterford, NY) to be their primary supplier for UV chemistries. GE has an unmatched technical support team, personified by Tom Ray, says Mercado. Ray was instrumental, along with GE senior account manager Krzysztof Hansdorfer, in offering expertise during the start-up phase of the new UV-coating line, the converter says.
The capital investment, now running at about 50-percent capacity, underscores the converter's commitment to a product segment that helped reshape its business. "The specialty release-liner market, especially films, has been very good to us, and continues to be a strong area for growth," says Heinemann.
Flexible-packaging converters are key—now and in the future, adds Mercado. "We supply millions of linear ft of narrow-slit release liner to go over the adhesive strip on plastic pouches." The application is typically untouched by the household names of the industry because Rayven's bagmaking customers want the liners custom-printed and pre-slit.
Long established in p-s films, of course, Rayven is also starting to see new business through several transfer-adhesive products introduced last year. Specialty-label converters, diecutters and screen printers are the initial markets. Used to affix printed, metal nameplates to multiple-CD books is one end-use for the transfer adhesives in the recording industry. Automotive speedometers are another. "The screen printed speedometers are actually stuck into place," explains Mercado. "Those have our transfer adhesive on one side and our release liner on the other."
Digital-photo bonanza
A third hot-growth area for Rayven is the result of the nearly 180-deg shift from film to digital photography. Sales of imaging media, especially for the inkjet market, have exploded as consumers learn how more and more can be done with their home PCs and printers. "People get bored pretty quickly printing at home on lower-quality paper," Heinemann says. "Our coated, cotton, inkjet paper is phenomenal for high-quality portraits."
With the company's makeover complete, sales clearly focused on specific targets, and new production capacity at the ready, Rayven appears prepared for what lies ahead. "We're really excited about the next five years," Heinemann says. "We hope we can handle all the business."
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End Product Profile Rayven sources 52-in.-wide rolls of 185-, 225- and 290-gsm raw substrate from an East Coast supplier. The proprietary, low-solids inkjet coating (developed to meet Moab's specifications) is applied 10-mils wet, necessitating slow line speeds of less than 100 fpm. A Faustel double Meyer-rod setup is used to coat both sides of the paper on Rayven's 56-in. line, which features a 9-million BTU Black Clawson drying oven and accumulators for easier roll changeovers. The coating head was also modified with an additional doctor system to handle the unique inkjet coating's rheology. After rewinding, the finished product is sheeted on a 61-in. Beck sheeter to various sizes from 4 x 6 in. to 35 x 47 in. It is then packaged into Moab-designed boxes in 25- and 50-sheet counts. |
Entrada™ Fine Art is a dual-sided, 100-percent cotton-rag paper for inkjet printing on higher-end equipment. Distributed worldwide by UT-based Moab Paper Co., Entrada comes in various weights, as well as bright white and natural versions. The material, used for photographic and fine-art reproductions, has won numerous industry awards. | Specifics:
RAYVEN, INC., St. Paul, MN |
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St. Paul, MN-based Rayven, Inc.'s newest line—a 72-in. proprietary coater—primarily converts UV-cured silicone release liner. Designed to handle both films and papers of various weights, including thin films down to 48-gauge, the equipment runs polyester, PP, BOPP, PE, polystyrene, plain and resin-coated papers. Control Assemblies Co. (Minneapolis) provides the line's integrated computer system and central operator console, which programs the Mitsubishi PLCs (city, state) and AC-vector drives. The various materials are initially coated via an Egan Davis-Standard (Somerville, NJ) three-roll offset/gravure coating head, then can be one-color flexo-printed inline by Wolverine Flexographic Mfg. Co. (Farmington, MI) equipment. Temperature-sensitive substrates are cured by a dual system, which first includes staggered, overlapping UV lamps from UVTechnology, Inc. (Milford, OH), then a second set of longer UV lamps supplied by UV Process Supply, Inc. (Chicago). Flexo printing is dried by a combination air/IR dryer from IR Systems (Jupiter, FL). Other components of the new line include a two-side corona treater from Enercon Industries (Menomonee Falls, WI) on the unwind, and Fife CDP-01 web guides (Oklahoma City). Rayven's two older silicone coaters and two coater/laminators are regularly upgraded with new components to keep them accurate and efficient. These units now sport either MAGPOWR Digitrac or Cygnus web-tension controllers (Oklahoma City). Sometimes used to convert medical-market products, a 60-in. thermal silicone coater has been retrofitted with an X-ray coating-thickness inspection system from Spectro Analytical Instruments (Fitchburg, MA). |
| FOR MORE INFORMATION CONVERTER: RAYVEN, INC., 651/642-1112, fax: 651/642-9497, www.rayven.com SUPPLIERS: |
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