Ellis Increases Output With Koenig & Bauer Die Cutter At the modern two-story facility for Canadian pack- aging specialist Ellis Packaging, a member of the Ellis Group, a wide variety of product formats run through the 85,000-square-foot plant on a daily basis to meet the needs of the food, confectionary, liquor, personal care and pharmaceutical industries. “Our customers demand short turnaround,” said Cath- ie Ellis, president, who oversees the business along with her brother Dave among three facilities.“To provide that level of quality service,we’ve invested nearly $15 million in new equipment. Most recently, we added our fourth high-speed Koenig & Bauer-Iberica die cutter here at our Pickering facility. Since the installation, we’ve seen our net output,which factors in press speed,makeready times, and down time, improve by a 25-30 percent. Due to the significant improvement in our productivity,we’ve seen a major increase in the amount of savings because we’re not running the die cutters in overtime.” The Optima 106 K’s features contribute to reduced makeready times and lower operating costs, according to Ellis. Some of Ellis’s products require very efficient setup times to be cost effective, she explains, and the pneumatically actuated quick lock system for locking up dies helps to reduce makeready times. In turn, she said, the die cutter helps to keep costs low on short run work. Conversely, Ellis has other customers and product formats where vendor managed inventory is part of its value proposition, and subsequently, those run quantities tend to be much longer where speed and press uptime is critical. For more than two decades Iberica die cutters have made major contributions to the growth at Ellis. Re- placing an existing Iberica die cutter presented min- imal learning curve to the staff.This fourth die cutter follows three new Koenig & Bauer-Iberica Optima 106 K 40-inch diecutters, two for Ellis Paper Box and one for Ellis Packaging. In fact, Ellis Mississauga was the first Iberica-Koenig & Bauer installation. Recently, Cathie Ellis was recognized for her leader- ship and named Printing Leader of theYear at the 14th annual Canadian Printing Awards, organized by Prin- tAction and its parent companyAnnex Business Media. She has worked for the family business dating back to its early days in the 1980s. Over the past 30 years, she has performed many jobs throughout the operation and rose through the company, officially taking the reins from her father Bill in 2010 as President. Founded in 1946 in Ontario, Canada,The Ellis Group is comprised of more than 250 employees at Ellis Pack- aging, Ellis Paper Box and Ellis PackagingWest.
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