Lexon Group will take delivery of a Boomerang folder gluer at its factory in Newport, South Wales, next month.
“We already have two Molls, but these are not geared up for the higher volumes that we want to do,” says commercial director Dominic Hartley. “These were not flexible enough and we wanted to upgrade.”
The chosen device is capable of straight line and crash lock boxes and will be enhanced with hot melt glue application to cope with coated sheets, as well as the standard cold melt gluer. Its key attribute is a small footprint of just 7 metres because the blanks are turned and travel back beneath the machine during the compression section to the feed end. This both saves on space and enables one-man operation.
“The Boomerang can do everything a line up to 20 metres long can do and it is a reasonable cost compared to those top end machines. Once we saw it we realised that this was the machine.”
Agent IPack Solutions, Manchester, was able to show Lexon an installation at a tree finisher north of London that had replaced a Moll for short run cartons. “The Moll was still there, but under dust sheets,” says Hartley.
IPack managing director John Hall says the Boomerang is ideal for commercial print companies getting into packaging print. “Most folder gluers need at least two people to operate, which increases their labour cost, and do not have much space. And people can retrain existing staff so do not need to recruit a specialist carton gluer operator.”
It will handle a 650mm maximum width for a straight line carton. “This covers quite a large range of cartons required,” Hall says.
The machine is due for delivery in July with training provided to be up and running within weeks.
This will give Lexon the experience of the machine and confidence on it before it launches a web to carton online service at the end of the summer. The front end shop has been developed and development of the integrated production workflow is underway, says Hartley. Printing will be on its Komori Lithrones and IS29 B2 inkjet press with die cutting on a Highcon.
