This year saw Andrew and Gary taking the opportunity to visit both DRUPA in Dusseldorf and MM-Karton’s state-of-the art Cartonboard Mill at Neuss.

This was our first visit to DRUPA and our initial reaction was ‘Wow!’. To be able to see all the big names in the printing and conversion trade exhibiting their products in one place was truly amazing. Having only allowed a day and a half to see the show we realised early on that we’d struggle to get round eveything. On that basis we decided to pick out the things we most wanted to see from the catalogue, and plan our second day rigidly. This worked well and we came away having achieved our aims.

Highlights for us were the HP Digital presentation, The Heidelberg Hall, Digital cutting and creasing and seeing Nano Technology for the first time.

We might think that our industry plods along but it can clearly be seen from the show that it is dynamic and forward-looking!

On the same note we used our trip to drop in to the MM Karton Mill at Neuss. It’s situated only 10km down the road ffromteh exhibition Centre (Messe Dusseldorf) across the other side of the river.

It’s the largest recycled board machine in Europe with a capacity of 1000 Tonnes per day. To give you an idea of the scale of the operation take a look at the mpeg below to see what 30,000 Tonnes of waste paper looks like.

 

After seeing  the pulp preparation we moved on to the board machine itself and then the finishing department. The machine is 5.5 metres wide and the Pope or Tambour reel coming off the end of the machine weighs 25 Tonnes. The footage below shows some reels on the floor awaiting rewinding. The chap in the video is 6 foot 4 inches tall, so the size of the reel can be seen in perspective.

 

Watch this space for more technical information and comment on current issues in the trade.