COMPANY
Eastface Packaging runs one plant of 90,000 square feet in Ahmedabad, with printing and converting on the same floor: a Komori Lithrone GL-637 six-color offset press, a Bobst Novacut die cutter and a Bobst Novafold folder gluer.
Three machines and the workflow around them. What follows is what each one decides about your carton, and each machine has a page of its own below.
TOUR THE FACILITY
Seven rooms in one building of 90,000 square feet, in the order a visitor walks them, starting at the board store, one room before prepress.
01 / Board on pallets
Kraft, folding boxboard and metallized board arrive by the pallet and stand in the store until a job calls for them. Grammage and caliper are checked against the docket at this door.
02 / Plates and proofs
Trapping, imposition and proofing run on one color-managed workflow. Plates leave for the press with CIP3 and CIP4 ink presetting data alongside them, and the proof you approved is the reference the press corrects against.
03 / Six units, one pass
The Komori GL-637 stands on its own in the hall with six units on one sheet path. Four carry process color and two stay free for Pantone spot inks, so a five or six color job runs in one pass.
04 / One strike
The Bobst Novacut takes printed sheets off the same floor and strikes them flat against a steel rule forme. Stripping and blanking happen on the machine rather than on a bench behind it.
05 / The seam closed
The Bobst Novafold pre-breaks every crease, lays the bead and holds the seam closed while the adhesive takes. Four and six corner trays are glued on the machine here rather than assembled by hand.
06 / Six tests, every run
The laboratory sits directly behind the folder gluer, the last machine the carton meets. Six physical tests run on every production run.
07 / Counted and palletized
Cartons are counted into master cases, labeled by batch and palletized with moisture safeguards. The test report, the Certificate of Conformance and the packing detail by master case travel with the order.
Booked as a thirty minute call first, so the visit is planned around what is on press that week.
Ten stops between an approved file and a skid on a truck, all inside the same building. Turn through them one at a time, or go straight to the stop you came for.
01
File to plate
A color-managed workflow handles trapping, imposition and proofing, and plates go to the press with CIP3 and CIP4 ink presetting data alongside them.
Make-ready starts from your file rather than from an operator judging the first sheet.
02
Film to board
On a metallic job, a metallized polyester film is laminated to the board before anything is printed on it, so the specification is settled when the board is ordered.
The press then prints over the mirror, with a white underbase on its own unit wherever a color has to read solid.
03
Six units, one pass
The Komori GL-637 runs six units at up to 15,000 sheets an hour. PDC-SG reads the color bar and corrects ink balance during the run, and PQA-S V5 inspects sheets in line.
Four units carry process color and two stay free for spot inks, so a brand color prints as the spot ink itself.
04
Aqueous or UV
Aqueous or UV coating is applied to the job.
UV and IR curing at the press means sheets arrive here dry, so the ink film sits harder under whatever goes on top of it.
05
Film over the print
Heat and pressure bond a BOPP film across the whole printed sheet, in gloss or matte. There is no spot version.
It is the most durable surface a carton can carry, and it gives foil a sealed face to key into.
06
Hot foil stamping
A heated die presses roll foil onto the sheet, and the foil releases only where the die touches. Temperature, pressure and dwell are set at make ready and hold for the run.
It goes on after printing and after any film, because nothing prints over foil.
07
Cut, crease, emboss
The Bobst Novacut cuts and creases with AUTOPLATEN registration, embosses at the same station, and strips and blanks in line.
Impression counters are validated against the die record and the machine locks out beyond set limits, so a worn die is caught by the equipment.
08
Crease, fold, seam
The Bobst Novafold runs straight line, crash lock, four and six corner and sleeve structures, with every crease pre-broken before it folds so board folds where it was scored instead of cracking a laminate.
A controlled glue bead keeps the side seam closed under compression in a container.
09
Six tests, every run
Six physical tests run in the plant’s own laboratory on every production run, alongside dimensional checks against the approved dieline and carton formation testing.
Defect sorting and a pre-dispatch inspection happen here, before anything is counted into a case.
10
Counted and palletized
Counted packing into master cases, batch labels, and palletized skids with moisture safeguards.
The completed test report, the Certificate of Conformance, the invoice, the packing list and the packing detail by master case travel with the order.
The order above is how a sheet moves on a job that carries every finish. A job without MetPET, a coating, BOPP or foil passes those stops by, and nothing else about the route changes.
Print, cut and crease, fold and glue, in the order a sheet meets them. Each one has its own page, opening on a full width photograph of the machine with the same machine running one press behind it, and carrying the specification the plant states for it.
Printing
The six color offset press, with two units kept free for spot inks, closed-loop color correction on every sheet and inline sheet inspection. It decides how the carton looks.
The full specification
Cutting and creasing
The automatic platen die cutter, cutting and creasing to the approved dieline with registration held across the run and stripping and blanking in line. It decides whether the carton erects.
The full specification
Folding and gluing
The folder gluer, pre-breaking every crease and laying a controlled glue bead on straight line, crash lock, four and six corner and sleeve structures. It decides whether the seam holds.
The full specification
A press specification lists what a machine can do. These are the things this press holds over a run, on every job.
Six units, not four. Four carry process color and two stay free for Pantone spot inks, so a brand color prints as the ink itself instead of a four-color build, and a five or six color job runs in one pass, with one registration.
Closed-loop density control. PDC-SG reads the color bar on every sheet and corrects ink balance during the run, so drift is caught in sheets rather than in thousands. It corrects against the shade card you approved, so a reorder matches the first run.
Inline inspection. PQA-S V5 checks sheets as they print, so a defect is found on our floor, not on your filling line. With UV and IR curing, sheets leave the press dry and move to converting the same shift.
The sheet is printed, coated, die cut, folded and glued without leaving the floor. A job has one specification, one part number and one team responsible for it from plate to pallet. Nothing in the carton line is subcontracted.
Certificates for every mark above are available on request, and a factory tour is the quickest way to check any of it.
Prepress is where the artwork is trapped, imposed on the sheet and proofed, and where the dieline the structure was approved on becomes the geometry every downstream operation works to.
Trapping is the small overlap that keeps a hairline of white board from showing where two inks meet, set for this press. Imposition is how many cartons fall on a sheet and in which orientation. It decides the yield, and yield is most of the difference between two quotes for the same carton. Proofing turns a Pantone number into an approved physical reference, viewed under D65 and TL84.
The plates go to the press with CIP3 and CIP4 ink presetting data taken from the same file. The ink keys start where the artwork sets them, not where an operator estimates from the first sheet, so the head of the run is short and close to color from the start. Make ready is measured in sheets rather than hundreds of sheets, on every reorder too.
The approved standard is retained against your part number, and every run that follows is corrected against it. A reorder here is a repeat of the first run.
Three machines make a carton. The workflow around them makes the fifth run match the first.
An approved color standard is set at proofing and held as the production reference for every run that follows, under controlled viewing conditions, with closed-loop spectral density control correcting ink balance on press. Color is measured against a retained reference, not judged by eye.
Every SKU carries a unique part number from order entry through delivery, and the shade card, the die position, the press make ready and the folder gluer settings are all held against it. A reorder is retrieved, not rebuilt. A repeat takes 8 days in production; a new order takes 15 to 20.
The completed test report for your batch, the Certificate of Conformance against the proof and shade card you approved, the invoice, the packing list and the packing detail by master case. They ship with the goods.
The scope of this plant, including what it does not make.
| Subject | On this floor | Not on this floor |
|---|---|---|
| Folding cartons | Printed, coated, die cut, folded and glued end to end, on the three machines above. | Nothing. No part of the carton line is subcontracted. |
| Corrugated shippers | Finished cartons are counted into master cases and palletized with moisture safeguards for dispatch. | The shipper itself. This plant makes the retail carton, not the box it travels in. |
| Filling and packing | Cartons ship flat, counted, batch labeled and detailed by master case. | Filling, sealing and packing. Your product never comes to Ahmedabad. |
| Bottles, jars, pouches, labels | The carton is engineered around the primary pack you supply, on a physical prototype in the real board. | The components themselves. This plant makes the carton only. |
| Vinyl placemats | Printing, proofing and color control, in this plant and to the same standard as the cartons. | Laminating and cutting, which run on a separate vinyl line. The plant’s certifications are not claimed for it. |
Rigid boxes and corrugated packaging are outside this plant. If a project needs one, tell us at the quote stage.
Ninety thousand square feet in Piplaj, on the edge of Ahmedabad, with the press hall, the converting line, the laboratory and the dispatch bay in one envelope.
The envelope is climate controlled, with HVAC and dehumidification, for the board. Paperboard is hygroscopic: it takes moisture out of the air and gives it back, and its dimensions and its stiffness move as it does. A sheet that has picked up moisture between printing and die cutting cuts to a slightly different size than the one the die was made for, and a board that has dried out cracks along a crease that a conditioned board folds cleanly.
Every downstream tolerance depends on the room. Registration held on press is lost if the sheet changes size before it reaches the die cutter, and a crease pre-broken on the folder gluer only helps if the board still has the moisture content it was scored at.
One press: a Komori Lithrone GL-637, six color offset with UV and IR curing, running to 15,000 sheets per hour. It carries PDC-SG closed-loop spectral density control, PQA-S V5 inline sheet inspection and KHS-AI make-ready with stored job parameters, and it takes CIP3 and CIP4 ink presetting data from prepress with the plates.
Every folding carton is. A sheet is printed, coated, die cut, folded and glued on one floor in Ahmedabad, and no part of the carton line is subcontracted. The one thing this does not cover is the vinyl placemat line: its printing, proofing and color control run in the same plant as the cartons, and its laminating and cutting run on separate vinyl equipment for which the plant’s certifications are not claimed.
Yes. Every SKU carries its own part number from order entry through delivery, an approved shade card is retained against that number, and the press stores make-ready settings and the folder gluer stores up to 5,000 job settings. A version change on an offset line is a plate change rather than new tooling, so a family of eight or forty variants runs against one structural family and reorders come back against stored records instead of being set up again.
Yes. A factory tour is booked as a thirty minute call first, so the visit is planned around what you want to see and around what is on press that week. Buyers who cannot travel are usually walked through the line on video against their own job.
Every line of the specification above can be seen on the floor. Book thirty minutes and the tour is planned around your own carton. Landed cost runs 20 to 30 percent below a comparable US supplier quote.
