With five sites across the USA and a workforce of around 650 people, Nosco is a giant in the world of pharmaceutical packaging. They work with over 450 pharma companies, including 9 of the top 10 in the United States, and over 160 natural health companies.
Watch the case study video below, or read on…
Craig Curran is President of the employee-owned company, and is based at Nosco’s 270,000ft2 Corporate Headquarters and Packaging Innovation Center in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. He gives a brief history of Nosco’s development to where they are today: “Well, Nosco is actually a 120-year-old company. We were founded in 1906 by a local family. They were in the office supply business until 1932, when [Doctor] Mr. Abbott asked them to take over his packaging for pharmaceutical drugs. This started the company on a whole new trajectory. So that’s how it grew up and we added on from labels to cartons, then on to flexible packaging… we actually make billions of labels, cartons and inserts every year.”
Nosco’s enviable client list has been steadily built over many years. The company prides itself on offering innovative and comprehensive services that help to retain existing customers and attract new ones, as Curran explains: “We’ve been doing business with the major pharmaceutical customers for decades. We also serve natural health and some consumer products. They come to Nosco, really, because of our Solutions Engineering Group, a group of packaging engineers that help our customers design the packaging from the beginning. So, if a new drug or a new product is going to come to market, we partner with the customer so that we really become a one-stop shop.”
He concludes: “The end result is that major pharmaceutical customers like an Abbott or an AbbVie, a Takeda, Otsuka, Astellas, they stay and do business here because we’re able to support them with that type of service.”
The move to LED curing at Pleasant Prairie
Nosco currently has two Komori presses installed with GEW UV curing systems. One is at the Pleasant Prairie facility, while the second is located in Nosco’s production facility in Bridgeview, Illinois. The two systems are quite different in specification as each has been designed precisely for the work to be done, while at the same time including the necessary infrastructure to enable them to easily be adapted or expanded in the future, as and when necessary.
Lee Marcoe, Strategic Operations Manager at Pleasant Prairie, explains the detailed forethought that went into equipping their Komori advance press, a GLX940RP-A: “With the addition of our new Komori, we opted for a 9-colour RP which is configured 8 over 1 with a coater on the upside. The single colour downside is already equipped with our GEW LED UV lamp, but we took a little bit of a look at what we might want to be tomorrow. This was a significant investment for the company. Some of our customers have been with us for 40 years and over. Not all of them were ready to make the full change into LED/UV. A lot of their commodities are many years old and they run with the artwork that they have, and it takes a long time, quite honestly, to get some of these changes made. We wanted to make sure that in the 10 years that we have this machine, we have the ability to adapt and be able to perform services that our customers would need moving forward, if they were to change.
“Originally, GEW was not going to be part of the machine install, but we actually spent quite a bit of time with our partners, Komori, to decide what the best options were. What we really found interesting was GEW did a lot of interesting innovation.
“We sat down with the GEW engineers to figure out what’s the best way for us to build this press. And it actually has all the infrastructure in it to fully equip it with LED/UV. We can do it in the delivery and all the printing units on top, in addition to what’s already on the downside.
“But we wanted to make sure that if things start to change, that we had the flexibility to put our LED arrays in all of the printing units along with regular UV, because sometimes certain inks, certain varnishes might respond better to UV. But to have the ability to be able to go back and forth allows for far more flexibility for us because again, sometimes we’re at the mercy of whatever our consumables are. So we really like the adaptability and versatility that GEW have to be able to run either or.”
The move to UV and LED curing at Bridgeview
At Nosco’s Bridgeview facility in Illinois, the Komori advance GLX-840A press is configured with a combination of GEW Arc and LED lampheads, for optimal productivity and versatility.
Peter Janik, Plant Manager at Bridgeview, begins by explaining their reasons for choosing GEW, and their need for change: “GEW was a vendor of ours for many years because we were using GEW systems on the narrow web presses. GEW did expand and built the systems for 40-inch lithographic printing presses, so that actually was a big consideration when we choose. The previous system that was on this press was already 10 years old and it was full UV, consuming a lot of power, so we were looking for better solutions as far as ink savings and also the power. We were looking for some modern, innovative ways to cure our product.
“The way we did it before we would print conventionally and then take those sheets and apply the UV finish on the offline machine. We have eliminated that by putting the GEW on our printing press and doing it all in one pass. So that means we have eliminated a lot of waste… waste of time, waste of product. And so, the cost savings are pretty substantial.
“The system that we have currently on the press is a combo. The ink is cured by LED lamps and the coatings are cured by mercury [lamps]. This press has eight printing units. We’ve only got two LED lamps for those eight units, but each has its own portal where we can plug the lamp, so the operator can move that lamp wherever he wants to.
“The GEW system is an auxiliary system that does not interfere with the conventional printing. So, you could have both systems on the printing press just like we have right now on our 840, we have conventional IR lamps and we also have GEW.”
Change for the better
At Pleasant Prairie, Lee Marcoe describes the benefits he has seen with the introduction of LED curing: “Well, everything here was running conventional, everything we had. So, our two Heidelberg presses were fully conventional machines.
“If we had to run a single colour or a colour on the backside, we would have to run it through two passes on our conventional presses. Sometimes we would have to be a little careful not to over-ink it because then that would lend itself to set-off, marking, scuffing, things downstream, that wouldn’t be preferable. But now with our LED, we don’t have to be so conscious of what our densities are and we can actually push the colour to give it a little more vibrant effect.
“And because it’s curing instantly on the downside, we get a very good lay on that uncoated toothy side of the sheet. So not only did the quality improve, and it’s a significant improvement, but the efficiency improves going downstream. So the shorter answer is, before we were taking twice as long to do something and it didn’t look as good. Now, things are looking far better and we’re getting it done in almost half the time.”
Marcoe highlights the contrasting benefits for both locations: “In our Bridgeview environment, we are certainly targeting business with more embellishments and more complex print needs because we have the machine there with the full capability. In our environment, what we’ve really targeted with this machine is being more efficient and being able to run one pass productivity and gain those throughput advantages while not sacrificing the quality at all.
“So it does allow us to target new business, and it also allows us to take our existing business and become more profitable with it.”
ROI and installation
With three GEW E4C Arc lampheads in the press delivery, and two LeoLED lampheads which can be moved to any of the eight interdeck stations, the UV system at Bridgeview is a sophisticated piece of engineering that required significant investment. With regard to the expected return on this investment, Peter Janik comments: “We did our own ROI, I don’t have exact numbers, that’s in the accounting, but the return on the investment is actually really good and I think the system was already paid off, after one year.”
Despite the complexity of the UV system installation at Bridgeview, it was carefully preplanned by both GEW and Nosco to minimise disruption and production downtime, as Janik explains: “The whole process was very easy because GEW they had a very professional approach from the sales standpoint, technical standpoint. The installation was quick. After one week, just the US technicians were on site and they stayed behind with us a couple of days, just making sure that everything is going smooth.”
In summary
Lee Marcoe is philosophical about the transition to LED curing, and offers sound advice to anyone considering a similar move: “Where do you want to be in five years from now? Where do you want to be 10 years from now? Because these types of investments can be large and you don’t want to put yourself in a position where you cannot be versatile and adapt. If I were talking to somebody who were getting into it for the first time, I would urge them to really take a look at where they think they’ll be, because then it becomes easier to choose who you want to partner up with for this.
“And I know it was a pretty easy choice for us. We did look pretty far down the rabbit hole to see… where do we think we’ll be in five years or 10 years? And we wanted to partner up with a company like GEW to make sure that we had the adaptability and versatility to do whatever it was that we needed to do.”
In Bridgeview, Peter Janik reflects on the decision to install a hybrid UV and LED curing system: “I am very glad I did it. Yes. It’s one of those times like when you have a problem with a car, and then you buy a new one, the problems go away and nobody talks about it. Same thing here. When we installed this new system, nobody had any issues.
“So there’s no problems, you know, operator comes in, no issues with the system. The product looks good. You know, we were able to gain more product because of this system.
“So, it is a great experience.”
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To learn more about GEW’s LeoLED2 curing systems for sheetfed presses, go here.
For details of GEW’s sheetfed offset distributor for North America, GMH UV, visit: https://gmhuv.com/
With grateful thanks to Nosco: https://www.nosco.com/
