Huhtamäki is a global food packaging supplier and celebrates 100 years of history in 2020. With a strong Nordic heritage, they operate in 35 countries and 81 sites around the world. Over 18,600 employees are working to deliver next generation smart-packaging. With its head quarter in Espoo, Finland, Huhtamäki is a public company listed in Helsinki stock exchange.
Their site in Hämeenlinna, Finland, provides food packaging solutions such as paper cups, paper plates, paper straws, salad boxes, egg boxes. Very important properties of their products contain renewable raw materials.
Background
The company’s main challenge is consistency in print quality, despite the variations on the printed substrate. Their previous plate making equipment was reaching the end of its life cycle, which is the reason why the company invested in its replacements. With the sustainability benefits a thermal plate making solution delivers, they decided to invest in a complete Flint Group plate making solution, consisting of the nyloflex Xpress Thermal System, nyloflex Exposure F IV ECLF, nyloflex XPM thermal printing plates and a ThermoFlexX 60.
“It was a great match for our current needs. The high print quality, the solvent free system and practically no VOCs were very compelling arguments. Flint Group has a very professional way of working, delivering excellent solutions serving our needs”, said Erno Virkki, production manager, Huhtamäki.
Implementation
The Xpress Thermal System F IV, consumes up to 88% less electricity than competitive thermal systems due to the short wave IR preheating system. Therefore, no chiller or a vapour handling system is required. It takes only 45 minutes to get a high quality thermal plate from imaging to finishing. VOC emissions are nearly eliminated, while up to 30% less fabric is used in the developer rolls. This contributes substantially to the sustainability efforts of Huhtamäki. A diverse range of printing plates, from flat top dot to round top dot plates, complete the solution. The XPM is a medium durometer, round top thermal plate for the flexible packaging and label markets with an exceptional performance on paper. The Exposure F IV ECLF is a combined exposure and light finisher unit with reduced footprint and efficient design.
The ThermoFlexX 60 is a flexo plate imager with its maximum plate size of 1067 x 1524 mm (42 x 60”) and is a perfect fit for the large web segment. Ambitious printers and trade shops are able to make plates in the shortest time possible at highest quality.
“We at Huhtamäki have been extremely satisfied with Flint Groups support during the equipment renewal project, including installation, training and scaling up the production manufacturing. Everything went great with seamless collaboration from start to the end of project. By installing the nyloflex Xpress Thermal System, the response time to our production needs is significantly faster. Producing a plate takes less than one hour. With the old equipment, the response time was one full day so we see a massive improvement in productivity”, explains Virkki.
Result
Erno Virkki is fond of declaring:“Our focus points are green values, environmental friendliness, green PE and sustainability. Products with no plastic are currently important drivers and the importance of these aspects will further grow in the future. With the nyloflex Xpress Thermal System we can meet these ecological requirements. The installation of the equipment and training our employees on it by the Flint Group team was all going perfect and in a record timeframe. We have now been running this solution a couple of months and are very satisfied. The printing quality is great and we have not faced any issues within production.”