Replacing Dairi-Pak’s old Autobox – a veteran machine of around 20 years – in January, the AB300 now handles the firm’s short runs and larger box orders for higher board grades, up to around 500 blanks.
Opting for the additional Flexo-Print FP300 1,000x1,000mm flexo module with minimum repeat gap of 350mm, Dairi-Pak is now also able to rapidly run out a variety of simple prints on boxes at a stroke, keeping frequently used stereos for a quick swap-out, allowing the firm to upsell printed boxes to its large-box customers.
On top of this extra capability – complemented by the firm’s prototyping Konica Minolta PKG-675i inkjet printer in the short-run arena – the Autobox averages a baseline throughput 30% faster than its predecessor.
Tim Gray, managing director of Dairi-Pak, told Printweek: “It’s a dramatic jump in passes per hour: the whole of last year on the older machine, we were averaging around 200. Now, depending on job size, we’re getting much higher. January was 312, February was 462, March was 365, and so far in April we’re at 267 – it’s a fantastic increase in productivity.”
Dairi-Pak’s old Autobox had been a steadfast part of the business for 20 years, and had itself been a replacement for Dairi-Pak’s first air-fed Autobox, bought in the 90s.
“It’s just such a simple machine. We’ve never had an issue; we’ve never had any downtime on the machine,” Gray said.
“Our operators are very, very used to using them, so it was a natural progression to go for. This is our third, and we’ve been very brand loyal because they’ve been fantastic machines.”
The old Autobox was only replaced, Gray added, because it was getting to the end of its serviceable life. Its “main brain” computer chip was no longer supported, so if that were to break, the machine would be irreparable – and given that Dairi-Pak made such heavy use of it, Gray decided it was time to upgrade.
He added: “It’s still working well – it’s gone to a plant, they’re using it, and are very happy with it. It lives on. We were just so reliant on it, we couldn’t afford to have it go down on us.”
Dairi-Pak employs 49 staff, and turns over around £10m from sales at its 4,600sqm Shropshire site, of which 2,800sqm is taken up by the firm’s production floor.
