‘Our core philosophy, based on strong customer and stakeholder relationships, has remained unchanged over the past five decades and has allowed us to consistently supply the highest level of quality that customers have come to expect.
Until February 2020, the company had been known as Northern Natal Plastics (NNP). The management team, however, believed the change to NNP Flexibles was necessary to more accurately reflect the seven printed and clear retail, form fill and seal, shrink, spine seal, wicketted, mono and multilayered bags and flexible packaging formats that the company produces.
The business began operating as a manufacturer of clear bread bags from its Ladysmith-based facility in 1971. NNP was purchased by Comflora founder Frank Combrinck in 1976. Under the leadership of Frank’s children, Linda and Leon, NNP expanded into other plain and printed flexible packaging formats.
In 2014, the management team of Anton Els, Marcel Meyer, Innocent Mdlalose and Brandt Rozendaal bought the business. Managing director Anton Els focuses on all technical aspects, sales and marketing director Marcel Meyer deals with customer-related issues, operations director Innocent Mdlalose is responsible for production and day-to-day operations and financial director Brandt Rozendaal oversees the accounting and financial aspects of the business.
Since the buyout, the management team has grown the business to include clear and printed LDPE and BOPP bags (spine seal, wicketted and retail), collation FFS (form, fill and seal) and shrink as well as recycled bags and sheeting. It has also acquired additional premises to allow for increased capacity and investments in more technologically advanced machinery. Furthermore, implementing ISO 9001 standards has allowed for better process flow and management, while an August 2019 fire resulted in a major improvement in safety and risk analysis and adequate separation between NNP’s different manufacturing processes.
The company’s extrusion department, for example, consists of eight extruders capable of extruding mono- and multilayer films ranging from 165 to 1 800mm in width. The in-house maintenance team carries out most of the servicing of these machines and calls on suppliers’ technical teams when additional assistance is required.
The printing department houses the first Bobst Vision CI press commissioned in South Africa, which can print eight colours in a maximum web width of 1 320mm and a 820mm repeat at speeds of up to 400m/min. ‘Bobst is well known as the print and registration control market leader, and the Vision CI’s SmartKEY and SmartSET features allow for quicker job changeovers that minimise waste and improve productivity and efficiencies,’ reports Innocent Mdlalose.
Riaan Hopley, Beswick Machinery’s product manager web fed, agrees that these patented automation features work in combination to reduce consumables and substrate waste to less than two web lengths to achieve saleable product on job start-up. ‘SmartKEY perfectly aligns the printing sleeves to guarantee the best preregister results and fully automatic bearing blocks open and close all eight sleeve shafts simultaneously for the quickest possible sleeve changeover and maximum rigidity. The doctor blade chambers are lightweight and feature quick locking for rapid changing. The intercolour dryers are very light, making them easy to remove for cleaning while the bridge dryer features impingement and floating dryers to achieve the maximum printing speed of 400m/min,’ Riaan explains.
Bruce Beswick, Beswick Machinery’s MD points out that the Smart automation features ensure repeatable process consistency, minimum waste and ease of manufacturing with maximum production speeds, which is especially important now that brand owners are uncertain of demand levels and favour much shorter run lengths.
Beswick Machinery also supplied NNP Flexibles with a JM Heaford 1300 DX-2CM semi-automatic plate mounter to complement the Vision CI press. ‘Heaford represents a pre-press efficiency centre of excellence and works closely with customers to obtain precision accuracy in plate mounting, which helps them eliminate set-up waste on their CI presses,’ remarks Riaan.
Graham Harrison, international sales manager at JM Heaford, adds: ‘The DX-2CM is an ideal choice for today’s market, where many converters are looking to customise mounters to their requirements. The mounter is currently available in widths of 1 000mm, 1 325mm and 1 500mm. Two motorised cameras offer positional accuracy of 10µm, while the industrial grade PC has space to store in excess of 10 000 jobs to enable easy recall of repeat jobs.’
NNP Flexibles has established a good relationship with Beswick Machinery, which means that the team is just a call away for technical and other support. ‘Bobst’s Helpline Portal also enables quick support and assistance to minimise any downtime. The professional technicians are eager to assist and are dedicated to constant innovation,’ Anton remarks. ‘As the first of a new generation of CI presses, the Bobst Vision had some teething issues, particularly with international Covid-19 travel bans in place and shipping delays. However, the Bobst team offered remote support so that Beswick’s two technicians could install and commission the press and ensure that subsequent upgrades and updates happen timeously. Overall, we are satisfied with our first Bobst press and look forward to building a long, happy relationship.’
Technological turning points
According to the NNP Flexibles team, one of the flexible packaging industry’s biggest challenges in the past 50 years has been the ability to produce more linear low-density polymer-rich (LLPD) products.
New technologies and changes in machinery were necessary to accommodate this stronger type of polymer. Additionally, newer technical polymers have been complemented by multilayer extrusion in creating thinner and stronger films and better technical packaging applications across various industries.
On the flexographic printing front, one of the biggest changes has been the advent of gearless presses. These technologies have been growing in leaps and bounds to enable better registration control and speeds.
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