Repro Poly Services installs Esko CDI Spark

The flexographic plate making trade shop, that supplies to label and carton printers and wide web flexo customers, installed the Esko CDI Spark 4260 digital flexo imager. Despite restrictions due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, the company was able to replace a smaller machine with the new Esko model during the recent lockdown.

Rohit Shingala, managing partner at Repro Poly Services, said: ‘This is our first Esko imager and we are delighted with the way the company helped us with the installation process despite being subject to lockdown restrictions. Since we began operating almost 15 years ago, we have regularly upgraded our technology to ensure we remained at the forefront of India’s competitive and fast-growing flexo printing and packaging industry. We identified a need for a faster and bigger sized flexo imager for our plate production, which drove us in our decision to install a new Esko device.’

The CDI Spark 4260 digital flexo imager delivers the high quality flexo plates for customers in the flexible packaging and folding carton markets. Its large size also helps Repro Poly Services make inroads in corrugated printing. According to the company, in just 24 minutes, it images a full size 42 x 60-inch or 1067 mm x 1524 mm flexo plate, regardless of thickness.

‘With the new, larger plate-size imager in operation, our productivity has practically doubled. Our processing time has been halved from one hour to just 30 minutes, and we have also managed to cut our waste substantially. With our earlier imager, we were able to process full-size plates of maximum 1,200mm, but with the Esko CDI Spark we can now process a full-size plate of 1,600mm,’ said Shingala.

Shingala said that the increased productivity and reduced waste helped the company deliver a much better service to its customers, which proved particularly helpful during the challenging conditions faced during the pandemic. With this faster processing capability, Repro Poly Services is now able to meet the growing demands of customers based both in India and overseas.

‘Our customers are obviously happy with a quicker service and improved quality. Despite the challenges faced by everyone during the lockdown, we have been able to supply them the best quality plates on time,’ he added.

Shingala said that in the wake of the global crisis, he remained hopeful that the industry would soon be fully operational once more.

‘We hope to serve our customers with the highest quality service for years to come thanks to the state-of-the-art technology that we now have at our disposal. We see the pandemic’s disruptions as a temporary phenomenon and expect the Indian packaging market to recover and grow at a healthy rate in the near future,’ he concluded.