BOBST has become the first machinery supplier to win the gold "Highlight of the Year" trophy in the 24-year history of Brazil’s Embanews awards.

The award is in recognition of the many innovations and benefits that the new NOVACUT 106 ER inline blanking die-cutter brings to cartonboard packaging manufacturers.

The NOVACUT 106 ER has extensive ties with Brazil. The machine is built at the Bobst plant in Itatiba, Brazil and received its world première last year in São Paulo at the ExpoPrint Latin America exhibition.

Dirceu Fumach, CEO of Bobst Group Latinoamerica do Sul (Bobst Brazil), said, "We are delighted that a project which we have been so intimately involved with has been recognized by the industry. The Embanews Awards are the most highly regarded in the Brazilian packaging industry and they recognize the most innovative new packaging technologies. The NOVACUT 106 ER makes integrated and automated production available to a wider range of packaging makers. It does this by bringing together BOBST die-cutting technology, the BOBST blanking tool system and our extensive process support network."

The ceremony announcing the winners of the Embanews Brazilian Packaging Awards was held on April 10th 2015 at the Esporte Clube Sírio in São Paulo, Brazil. The event brought together around 380 professionals from various parts of the industry, including users and packaging suppliers. BOBST has won Embanews awards three times in the past, including for its Braille embossing system ACCUBRAILLE and for its ACCUCHECK carton checking technology. This year the NOVACUT 106 ER won the Machinery, Equipment and Systems category before going on to be awarded the gold ‘Highlight of the Year’ trophy, which is presented to the entry with the highest score across all the award categories.

Embanews is a Brazilian publication that specializes in reporting on packaging for the food, beverage, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals markets. The magazine’s awards involve the in-depth examination and testing of entries by a jury made up of representatives from well-respected industry organizations. This jury reviewed the benefits of the NOVACUT 106 ER, which is particularly suited to fast growing markets such as Brazil, India and China. Using the NOVACUT 106 ER, carton makers can replace the slow, labor-intensive breaking out of cartons by hand with a fully automated and integrated process. The press can handle single-cut or double-cut blank separated work, but can also deliver full sheets where blanking is not required. This gives carton-makers flexibility in the jobs they take on and allows them to build up a portfolio of blanked work while still running their existing un-blanked jobs. Blanking also improves the performance of downstream processes, because blanked cartons suffer less deformation and so run more consistently on machines such as folder-gluers.

The NOVACUT 106 ER perfectly matches the needs of carton makers in its size IIIB sheet format, its 7’000 sheets per hour running speed, and its ability to handle substrates from paper and cartonboard through to litho-laminates, microflutes and up to C-flute corrugated board.

Part of the NOVACUT 106 ER eco-system is to make blanking tooling easily available to users wherever they are in the world. Bobst Brazil is now a manufacturing hub for these tools, supplying affordable, high quality blanking tools to customers across South America.