Accuracy and speed
At the various Elopak production locations, every production process starts the same way: large rolls of liquid paper board enter a machine, which then prints the paper board at high speed. A Madern machine with rotary cylinders die-cuts and punches the paper board into the required packaging format. Jim Ploegaert, team leader and tooling responsible at Elopak, explains that these operations have to be carried out with high precision. “The sizes of the beverage cartons are very precise; it is really about micrometers. If you are a few micrometers off, it may cost a large amount of material on a large scale. Besides accuracy, the speed of the machine with the rotary tools is also crucial. The aim is to manufacture as many beverage cartons that meet the quality requirements as possible in the shortest possible time.”