Kingston Carton installs Bobst machines

Packaging Solutions

The Kingston Carton Company has increased plant capacity by over 50 million sheets a year following the installation of two new Bobst lines. The investment will help the company exploit ‘very high volume’ markets which it has not previously entered, as well as allowing it to service the current double digit growth in sales to its existing customer base.

David Wilson, chairman of Kingston Carton, said: ‘The economy is picking up, especially here in the UK, which has resulted in us seeing a 25% increase in our order book compared to a year ago. Our ethos has always been to invest in new capacity before we need it, so that we can ensure continuity of supply to our customers. However, we wanted to do more than that with this investment and use it to develop markets that are new to us. Very high volume work takes up a lot of machine time and, historically, we have chosen not to take it on because it might compromise the service levels that we provide to our existing customers. But now that our capacity has increased so dramatically we can easily handle that sort of work without any knock-on effects.’

The two new machines are a Visioncut 106 LE die cutter with an optical lateral register system and an Expertfold 110 multipurpose folder-gluer.

Both lines have been supplied with Helpline+ systems which allow remote diagnostics by technicians at the Bobst UK offices in Redditch, or its worldwide headquarters in Switzerland. The system also offers a platform for the later implementation of remote production monitoring.