Title: Roberts leads pack with flexible facility
Publication: Printing World
Date: 29 July 2004

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Roberts Mart will bring on stream next month the UK’s most modern flexible packaging facility. It has taken the Leeds printer ten years of discussing and planning and expenditure heading towards £9m

The new single storey 80,000 sq.ft factory has been built at Thornes Farm Business Park, just east of Leeds and will be the largest factory in the Aire Valley. There will also be 20,000 sq.ft two-storey office area on the site as well

The company has been running since 1852 at a six-storey building built in Leeds in the 1820s and now employs 120 people. Chairman John Roberts is the fifth generation of the family to be in charge, though the company can now boast a sixth generation on its staff

The move has been spread over two stages, the first was to install a ten-colour central impression cylinder Fischer & Krecke 26S flexo press and once this completed its commissioning trials, the rest of the factory began its transfer

The new press installed is one of the most technologically advanced presses available. Unusually for a CI press, not only is the CI cylinder cooled but the side frames are as well

Julian Cook, sales executive for Edlon, says: “When printing on lightweight film stocks, to ensure consistency of quality throughout the run, cooling is vital. For each 1ºc of change in air temperature around the press, the side frames and CI cylinder expand 12microns respectively”

Fischer & Krecke has this technology patented and the patents have been a major reason for Fischer & Krecke’s dominance in sales of presses in this sector

A further part of the £9m investment is a regenerative thermal oxidiser which burns any VOC’s produced and can feed the heat generated back into the factory for warmth. Also on the investment is a Canadian built polythene bag making machine

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