Offering Tailor-Made Solutions

Tell us about your participation at the recently concluded GPP Summit 2018.
Afra along with its dedicated divisions such as our flexible business unit called Flexo Print Pack, participated in the GPP Summit 2018 to showcase our range of products and solutions to the summit’s attendees. The GPP Summit was actually an excellent initiative to participate in. In the summit, we brought our smart on-demand label press. This is actually a tabletop label press, which can also do long runs.

Apart from our flexo partners eDale and flexo label finishing partners GM from Denmark, we also showcased Trojan’s range of products. Trojan is a company from Denmark, which produces label presses. These label presses can print on film substrates, paper labels, and other substrates that come with some sort of coating on the top. With these presses, we are focusing on brand owners, commercial presses, and digital presses in the region.

What sort of demand do you see in the label industry in the region?
There are all sorts of on-demand label requirements. These demands come from companies that are into the fresh food sector, chemical factories, brand owners and so on. If you are into producing unique labels, then this is the perfect solution. There are no operating skills required to run these machines. They are also easy to use and are quite rugged. Hence, these can also be used in a 24 x 7 scenario.

Our partner eDale is very famous for autonomous solutions, focusing on flexo packaging. The press is so autonomous, that it can adjust by itself based on the print job. It can also do 100 percent inspections on its own. From a roll of paper to die-cut blanks, that’s the kind of solutions we offer on the market.

Which other products do you offer on the market?
We also have unique solutions in terms of in-line flexo press. These presses are very versatile flatbed die-cutting units. These machines can be the right solution for inline packaging production. It can also do labels. It can do from 12 microns to 600 microns. A wide range of materials can be used.

We have many customer success stories wherein they are moving into inline packaging solutions from offline. Afra is a provider in the packaging and finishing sector. Trojan is also a very successful product. We have sold more than 400 units in Europe for short and mid-run labels. GM, another partner of ours, is a company in Denmark, which is into label finishing and flexible finishing for more than two decades. We are their distributors for markets such as GCC, East Africa, and West Africa.

What sort of market trends do you foresee for this region in the upcoming months?
Demand for labels is growing. Of course, people need very special solutions, rather than mass products. We believe in supplying tailor-made solutions rather than giving the same kit to all the customers we work with. We are really trying to give specialised solutions as per the requirements of each printer. We are a company that believes in consultancy, and hence, we base everything on offering tailor-made solutions.