Midlands-based Excel Labels has seen a marked increase in production efficiencies following investment in a Vectra ECTR 4 spindle turret rewinder from A B Graphic International (ABG).
Excel produces labels and tags for nationwide industrial and retail use. The company has seen a growth in demand for short run length label rolls used in portable printers. As a consequence, finishing had become manpower intensive with a typical job taking up to four days to manually slit and re-roll – a task so time consuming it was commercially unviable.
Excel Labels purchased a Vectra ECTR 4 spindle turret rewinder, which included an automatic core loading module enabling cores to be positioned automatically and accurately onto the rewind shaft, thereby enabling a fast cycle time that was simply not possible when loading conventionally by hand. The investment resulted in instant efficiency gains across all roll lengths.
‘With the new ECTR auto core loader, we are now running the small roll work inline as well,’ said Excel Label’s managing director, Andrew Keatinge. ‘And by doing so, we are achieving a speed of 38 metres a minute per 13-metre cut. The job which collectively took us five days across two machine processes, now takes just one day processing fully in-line. The productivity results are awesome, saving us not only days of intensive manual work but also our sanity!’
Since investing in this Vectra ECTR 4 spindle turret rewinder with the automatic core loading option, Excel have now placed a further order for two more ECTR’s with core loaders, and an additional order to retro fit an automatic core loader module onto one of their other 8 ABG turrets.
