INOMETA – Interview with Oerlemans Plastics B.V.

INOMETA – Interview with Oerlemans Plastics B.V.

August 5, 2019 Off By Sebastian Reisig

Oerlemans Plastics B.V. is a manufacturer and supplier of a wide range of flexible speciality films and packaging using blown film extrusion and flexographic printing methods.

Oerlemans manufactures plastic packaging for packaging and specialised wholesalers in all variations and sizes, from fruit and vegetable packaging to carrier bags. The modern printing press has 6 state-of-the-art printing units. Using these machines, Oerlemans can produce simple line loads right up to full colour screen printing. The latest equipment in the machine park is able to print with10 colours. Founded in 1972/ approx. 250 employees

Good morning Mr. Couwenberg and Mr. Rombouts. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us about what you do on a day-to-day basis and your experiences with the INOMETA INOflex CFRP adapter. Firstly, a question about your products. Which products does Oerlemans Plastics produce at this site?


Ronald Couwenberg: Here at our location in Giessen we mainly print flexible packaging for the food and agricultural sectors. On one hand, this involves a large amount of foil packaging for garden soil. On the other hand, we also manage the production of packaging for baked goods. On top of that, we additionally print on shipping bags for e-commerce and e-retailing.

Here at the site, flexographic printing mainly takes place using the central cylinder machines. Which INOMETA products are used in the manufacture of your print products?


Ronald Couwenberg: Our machines are primarily fitted with pneumatic and hydraulic adapters from INOMETA, made from either CFRP or steel. On our F&K 16S we use a hydraulic steel adapter. This is a custom build with a printing length of 330 mm, which was developed and manufactured for us by INOMETA. The special feature of this adapter is the very small degree of bounce, which is not so easy to implement.

Our W&H Miraflex printing machine uses INOflex® CFRP adapters from INOMETA. Here, we print using pneumatic and hydraulic CFRP adapters and achieve very good results in terms of print quality, machine performance and speed as well as the reduction in bouncing.

That’s interesting. So you have both variants of adapter in use. How or when do you decide if pneumatic or hydraulic adapters will be used?


Ronald Couwenberg: As a rule, we always start a print job with the pneumatic adapters. But since we also have two hydraulic adapters of each size available, we can refer to them when problems occur in the printing process.

What sort of problems would you be addressing here? Which problems do the hydraulic adapters solve?


Ronald Couwenberg: Most notably, they solve the issue of ‘bouncing’, the vibrations that repeatedly occur in flexographic printing. This can also evidenced by the approval of the machine by W&H. With the hydraulic adapters we can further increase the printing speed, which means that on balance we have more throughput.

We are glad to hear that. But you just said that the pneumatic CFRP adapters are also used. How are your experiences with these? What advantage do they offer?

Ronald Couwenberg: The pneumatic adapters are easy to handle and easy to grip. This is especially true for the larger, heavier sizes. They have something like a handle on the operator side. This is a clear advantage over adapters from other manufacturers. In addition, INOMETA guarantees good print quality at high print speeds on these adapters.

It is important to understand that our years of experience in the design and manufacture of hydraulic adapters have been incorporated into the pneumatic adapters. The design used by INOMETA is based on the bridge principle which enables force to be applied close to the bearing points to the air mandrel. Let’s come on to print speeds. How does the average speed look with regard to your print jobs?

Ronald Couwenberg: That always depends very much on the order. We mostly print heavy and thick foils, so the roll is used up very quickly. Of course, that continues to limit the maximum speed.

Let’s take a look into the future. What does this hold for Oerlemans? We’ve heard that a new machine will be purchased at this site in a few years’ time. In this case, what are the chances of INOMETA adapters being used again?

Ronald Couwenberg: Yes that’s true. At the moment our experiences with INOMETA are very good. My colleagues in production are very satisfied with it. As far as we are concerned, the next machine will be re-equipped with INOMETA adapters.

We are glad to hear that. We would like to thank you for the kind interview and we look forward to our continued cooperation in the future.