Within the high-growth Asia-Pacific region Indonesia is fast becoming a key KBA market. In April last year the Sansico Group, a prominent Jakarta-based packaging major, installed a new six-colour Rapida 105 universal coater press at its subsidiary PT Grafitec in Cikarang. This month the group's second Cikarang-based production plant, PT Printec, fires up a Rapida 105 five-colour coater press. Two of KBA-Metronic's Genius 52UV presses are already in action at the same location, mainly printing on plastic and other non absorbent substrates and materials. These installations followed the commissioning in late 2008 of two 18,000sph eight-colour Rapida 106 perfectors at publishing market leader PT Gramedia.

Sansico started out as a local printer but soon evolved into an internationally successful print group for packaging and paper products. Of its five production plants four are in the greater Jakarta area and one in Foshan (Guangdong, China). The manufacturing plants are organised along various printing processes which include offset, flexo and gravure technologies and are moving towards a fully digital workflow. Each facility also caters to specific customers and sectors, thereby allowing a dedicated focus and high service levels. The group employs more than 2,000 people (with seasonal fluctuations). Alongside quality folding cartons and plastic packaging the broad product spectrum includes greetings cards, wrapping paper, serviettes, giftware (bags, boxes etc) and partyware. Sansico numbers prominent household names such as Mattel, Target, American Greetings, Nestle, Coca Cola, Costco and Walmart among its customers. Exports account for the majority of group output and major shipping destinations include the USA and Europe.

For almost two decades Sansico has built up a close alliance with US toy manufacturer Mattel. Through this partnership with Mattel Sansico has adopted and assimilated best in class manufacturing and management practices as driven by the customer's requirements, providing a platform for a culture of continuous improvement. Among many joint initiatives Sansico and Mattel have implemented a lean manufacturing system based on balanced and aligned sequence timing across the Mattel assembly line and Printec's production flow. In addition Printec has established a state-of-the-art in-house lab to ensure compliance with international standards for heavy metals and phthalates.

Shifting market drives realignment
Grafitec director Rudy Ghozali says: "PT Grafitec and PT Printec used to operate sheetfed offset presses from other manufacturers. But the Indonesian market has undergone far-reaching changes in recent years. Innovative products and continual improvements in customer services have made KBA an attractive alternative. The price, performance, delivery time, makeready and level of automation of our first Rapida 105 universal were pretty compelling, and it was the same with the new five-colour Rapida 105. And in view of the top-class KBA reference installations here Indonesia, staff training was not an issue."

He continues: "As we have known for the past three years, KBA also offers some interesting options for green printing, one of which is the waterless Genius 52UV. We have great confidence in KBA presses. We'll continue to keep a weather eye on technological advances and when further investments are on the table we'll be contacting KBA again.