Coating & Laminating
Scottish firms, ACA and Taskforce sign joint venture agreement
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ridging the Glasgow-Edinburgh divide, two trade finishers have signed a joint venture that will enhance business for both. ACA in Glasgow will pass saddle- stitching, binding and pharmaceutical folding work to Taskforce in future, while Taskforce will place work with ACA that needs enhancing services including UV varnishing and foiling. ACA director Dara Changizi says: “During the pandemic, ACA has moved further into the packaging sector and invested in die- cutting, die-making and folder-gluing. We still have a strong base of commercial printers working with us and we will continue to offer many specialist finishes, not least laminating, coating and varnishing, embossing and debossing and Wire-O- binding. However, it makes sense for us to use Taskforce for the stitching and binding work. We are just 60 miles apart and, with our own fleet of vehicles, we can collect or deliver quickly and speedily.”
Taskforce managing director Alex Porteous adds: “We heard that ACA were selling a binding line and so it made sense to talk. In fact, we had recently bought a 12-station Muller Martini Pantera, which has quick set up, is compact and can change easily from hot melt to PUR. The surprise for us and ACA is that we haven’t talked before this; it’s a very good fit.”
Both companies remain entirely financially
independent and are finding trade bouncing back after the Covid lockdowns. There is no transfer of equipment or thought of a buyout. ACA was founded in the 1980s and, five years ago, was the subject of a £6.5million management buyout, backed by Royal Bank of Scotland. This has brought new vision and an emphasis on investment in equipment, people and service to the company. Taskforce was set up in 1990 with three staff when it discovered a gap in trade finishing services in Edinburgh. Today it employs 28 staff. It offers machine and hand finishing services, as well as mailing and distribution. Both companies agree that each will, ultimately, be responsible for their customers to ensure the quality and delivery is right. Their customers will gain from a wider portfolio of services but no change in established communications and service levels.
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aca.ltd
Conducting a great business with GEW C
ondAlign uses a dual lamp GEW LeoLED UV curing system in the production of conductive films, which instantly cures the polymer coating and fixes the position of the aligned particles suspended within.
CondAlign is a young, thriving technology company with an international client base. Its core business is in the development of innovative conductive films for various applications, turning existing materials into high-value products through a patented technology to align particles in polymers. CondAlign’s business is based on technology and product development before licensing to customers. One such product can best be described as a double-sided tape with anisotropic, or through-plane, conductivity. The company is steadily expanding its small but highly skilled team, and has recently enhanced process technology for continuous roll-to- roll production of conductive films at its new facilities in Oslo, Norway.
The pilot roll-to-roll (R2R) system has been
supplied by Emerson & Renwick, with an integral, dual lamp GEW LeoLED UV curing system which instantly cures the polymer coatings to fix the position of the aligned particles, as illustrated. This is the second machine installed by CondAlign and it now enables them to offer their clients a low-volume interim production line for test materials, while those clients are transitioning to full production capacity at their own manufacturing sites. The machine is capable of producing up to 200sq m per hour of finished film, sufficient to supply the customer with samples for qualification, prototyping and marketing activities.
Phillip Mayhew is the lead engineer at CondAlign and works most closely with the new R2R system. He highlights the ease of operation of the machine, and how the UV LED curing system contributes to that simplicity: “I think the best one can say about the UV LED system is that it just does its job every time, without an issue. I can adjust anything I want on it and it just works exactly and perfectly every time. We’ve been using
it for around nine months now and we are usually only operating at around 20% to 30% of the LED’s power capability. With the thickest, thermally conductive films we go up to around 60% power, so we still have plenty of room for manoeuvre.”
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gewuv.com
20
July/August 2021
convertermag.com
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