The 11th and 12th May, in coincidence with Converflex-Grafitalia, Omet celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding with more than 300 guests from all around the world. Amidst dinners and boat trips, live demos and stately homes, the book of the history of the company and the plans for the future were presented.
At the end of readings from parts of the book that told the story of Omet’s founder, Angelo Bartesaghi, of “his” company and indirectly, that of postwar Italy and the Lecco community, we were all moved: Antonio, Angelo’s son and current Omet CEO, along with his mother and sister, the sales director Marco Calcagni, the authoress of the monograph Chiara Mauri, lecturer at the SDA Bocconi, the closest employees, we journalists from the international press and the representatives of the local authorities and local industry, who knew, loved, argued with and shared life and ideals with a man of strong feelings and a clear mind and aboveall with a generous heart. We were moved, in the fine villa at Varenna that hosted the event, because in the history of Omet we found pieces of our history and followed the development of a concern born in that branch of Lake Como that looks south and has grown up in a world that is by now global. And now, with Angelo gone – he died at the end of 2011 – but with Antonio, Marco and the others, the concern faces onto the future structured, strong in ideas and technology, announcing the coming stages of development. Supported by the project of two new machines of great potentiality: the 670 mm wide sleeve offset that will enable Omet to relaunch in the packaging sector, and the first Omet/Domino hybrid digital-flexo machine, already completed and about to be installed at Eticont.
The first sleeve offset
The visit to the works, on the morning of May 12th, centered on the presentation with demo of the new XFlex X6 with offset sleeve units, presented as the first offset in the world that enables an ultrarapid workchange by only replacing the sleeve. Made for now with a 430 mm web width and configured in 10 colors (5 sleeve offset units and 5 flexo UV units), with a cold foil unit, a gravure die and the Vision-1 automatic register control system.
It is the first Omet with offset sleeve technology and was completed ahead of schedule, installed and commissioned at Bialystok, at the Polish converter Masterpress that has already ordered a second one; the Polish printer, that has another 4 Omet machines, uses it to make high range heatshrink and In-Mold labels, mainly for the food sector.
The offset sleeve unit, launched at Labelexop 2011, offers many advantages, among which an extension of the format range with a stroke increase of 1/48 inches and an easy workchange, also thanks to the reduction of the unit storage spaces and the problems of shifting the same.
Many the new technological features on board: the anti-ghosting system, absolute rigidity and the lack of sliding parts to avoid vibrations, print settings outside the unit, speeds of up to 200 m/mins, format range from 14 to 25 inches, pneumatic blocking of sleeves directly in the machine (as in flexography), automatic register and pre-register controls (lengthwise and transversal), motorised ink ducts and automatic wetting system, automatic pressure control, better temperature and stretch performance.
