Chesapeake Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Packaging, a leading global supplier of paperboard packaging, has undertaken the first step in a major investment programme to strengthen its capacity and ensure it can continue to offer its customers the very best production options.

Chesapeake is investing in a new KBA Rapida 106 press at its Greenford operation which produces high quality, complex patient information leaflets. The B1 format 6-colour press, scheduled for commissioning in May, is a replacement machine and incorporates a perfecting unit.

General Manager, Roy Brindle, said, “The new press will provide a significant uplift in capacity and improve production efficiency. It will also enable us to respond to a growing market demand for larger leaflets formats allowing us to offer more options to our customers. It will also allow us to meet the high quality specifications and further develop our position in the pharmaceutical and healthcare market.” 

The decision to buy the press was made after thorough investigation of all the leading manufacturers: “We conducted extensive trials and set demanding targets to achieve specific make-ready and turnaround times. After rigorous assessment, the KBA press was the most impressive. It was imperative that we could offer the assurance to our customers that any reverse print would be in perfect registration.  The KBA press did everything we wanted it to including the ability to run lightweight sheets, often 40gsm or below.”

Mr Brindle notes: “The new generation KBA press benefits from the latest technology which will reduce make-ready times and allow us to deal with smaller order quantities more effectively. Its ability to run alcohol-free was also a non-negotiable criterion as the factory has been an alcohol-free operation for the last five years.”

In addition, the Rapida has an inbuilt system to improve sheet feeding, essential when handling fine papers at high speed. A dedicated plate-cylinder drive unit, DriveTronic SPC, supports simultaneous plate changing in less than 60 seconds, regardless of the number of printing units. KBA set a world make-ready record at Print 09 using this intelligent software-based system. An eight-colour B1 Rapida 106 produced a total of 17 unique four over four-colour jobs, each with 500 saleable sheets, in one hour. The performance included a total of 136 plate changes.

Mark Nixon, KBA UK executive sales director, says: "Chesapeake is an outstanding worldwide business and we are delighted the high performance Rapida 106 has been selected for its Greenford operation. The commitment to innovation at KBA has enabled the development of a finely-tuned press capable of meeting all Chesapeake’s needs - whether that be the ability to run very lightweight stocks at high speeds or change over jobs in minutes - with ultimate quality assurance and product integrity. From the very beginning we have worked closely with Chesapeake Greenford to create a press that will spearhead its production and define its operation well into the new decade.”