CA cartonmaker targets the future with manroland 700 Hi-Print press

-- Converting Magazine, 8/24/2008

Tom Wynne figures the first three manroland presses worked so well at Fleetwood-Fibre Packaging & Graphics, the fourth shouldn’t be any different. Responding to changing market conditions, Wynne, vp-manufacturing for the City of Industry, CA, printer, recently added a ROLAND  700 Hi-Print press (below) to handle the converter’s high-end folding-carton work.

“This is our fourth ROLAND 700 press in the last 11 years,” Wynne says. “It replaced a 4-color press with coater that was only four or five years-old. Several years ago, 75 percent of our folding-carton business was 4-color or less. Today, it’s just the opposite as we add more higher-end work of five colors or more.

Besides turning out upscale carton work, a key issue for Wynne in the decision to purchase the new ROLAND 700 was driving down operating costs. “This new press can help us do that in many ways,” he adds. “Looking at our current business and what we need to handle it, the flexibility along with time- and waste-saving features designed in the ROLAND 700 Hi-Print made a lot of sense. We have all of the Quick-Change features for faster make-readies and less paper waste.”

The bulk of Fleetwood-Fibre’s overall business is still corrugated. Wine boxes, agricultural and displays are produced in one of its facilities and folding-carton rules in the other building. Here, the manroland presses run labels for displays while, primarily, producing a growing percentage of cartons for personal-care products, cellphone accessories, medical-pharma packaging and upscale food packaging.

Fleetwood-Fibre’s ROLAND 700 has a perfector in-between the first and second units and can go from straight-to-perfecting mode in less than a minute. Features include automatic format setting, automatic ink/roller blanket washers, remote-control inking, Automatic Plate Loading (APL), and automatic sheet size-and-thickness adjustment.