Mex, Switzerland—A family business serving the European market for 25 years, Unit NV has seen remarkable growth in the last six years and has developed an enviable reputation in the pharmaceutical and phytopharmaceutical packaging sectors.

With their headquarters in Kontich, Belgium they aim to enhance their production capacity and agility for incoming orders by investing in a BOBST EXPERTFOLD 50 folder-gluer with two notable in-line modules, ACCUBRAILLE and HANDYPACK GT semi-automatic collecting table.

Lissa Vanmechelen, General Manager at Unit NV: “The pharma sector relies on a combination of speed and quality. Our customers require short lead times, and every single item we produce must be perfect. We chose EXPERTFOLD 50 as our folder-gluer unit because it gives us the performance we want, with the versatility to expand our capabilities across the pharma industry.

“Crucially, this investment was also a matter of streamlining our processes and reducing the pressure on our team. Previously, we would produce braille elements separately on our die-cutting machines or outsource this when needed. Instead, we wanted to produce this inline as part of our folding process.”

The EXPERTFOLD folder-gluer range can produce an impressive number of box styles at speeds of up to 450m/minute. Ideal for high volume converters, it delivers excellent levels of productivity and consistently high quality. Featuring the intuitive HMI SPHERE control system interface, EXPERTFOLD is fully compatible with BOBST Connect. This cloud-based platform plays an essential role in process optimisation, enabling seamless data exchange between machines and linking the whole process from customer PDF to the finished product.

As a versatile BOBST technology, the EXPERTFOLD range enables packaging converters to bring other processes in-line with additional modules. One of these processes, Braille embossing, was an important area of focus for Unit NV in the pharmaceutical sector.

“To drive further efficiency, we wanted to bring Braille production in-line,” Lissa continued. “We would previously have to do this on our die-cutters, or for certain jobs this would be outsourced. The BOBST ACCUBRAILLE module, which we have on both the left- and right-hand side, solves this problem by bringing the process entirely in-line. We can emboss Braille onto all four carton panels, even across the running direction, and the quality is fantastic.”

The patented ACCUBRAILLE unit can emboss up to 8 lines of braille, including transverse embossing, with smooth feeding of dot-free blanks. Operators save time with its quick tool mounting system, and motorized dot height adjustment contributes to excellent user ergonomics.

Adding further line efficiency, Unit NV also invested in the compact BOBST HANDYPACK GT outlet peripheral. The semi-automatic collecting table increases the productivity of folder-gluers with easy carton collection, even with minimal staff headcount. As well as reducing manual task pressure on the workforce, a further benefit that Unit NV found with the HANDYPACK was increased oversight of how many completed packaging units have been created.

Lissa added: “The technology is easy to set up and is user-friendly, and the training and support we receive from BOBST is excellent. With EXPERTFOLD 50 and our ACCUBRAILLE and HANDYPACK solutions in place, we are seeing production speed increase by around 25%. That is a major benefit for us to have in a competitive marketplace and means we can accomplish more on a daily basis. What we wanted to achieve with our investment was to bring as many high-quality processes in-line as possible and accomplish more in a single pass. We can now do that, and our in-line setup gives us more agility in making changes or fixing errors, so the quality of what we’re producing is fantastic.”