Deputy Minister Opens Parkside's Malaysia Plant

Source from:  Tobacco Reporter 03/23/2010

Malaysia's deputy minister of international trade and industry, Dato Mukriz Mahathir (seen here, right, with Parkside Flexibles' chairman, Lawrence Dall), on Friday opened in Kuala Lumpur Parkside Flexibles' first overseas production facility. In announcing the official opening, Parkside said it believed its new manufacturing base would enable greater strategic alignment with its customers while delivering further growth for the business. In addition to providing state-of-the-art laminating and coating technology, the time was right to bring high quality flexographic print to Asia, the company said in a press note. So the second phase of the investment would see the new production unit equipped with a flexographic press, which would allow it to enhance its product range in the region. Parkside said it had chosen to install exclusively flexographic printing machinery because of its unparalleled flexibility, speed-to-market and cost efficiency. It said its strategy of continual improvement and investment in innovation had enabled it to develop innovative products for the tobacco industry that ranged from registered heat seal paper to its "revolutionary lock n peel" roll-your-own pouch. At the same time, investment in the "Flexo" process had narrowed the quality gap with traditional gravure printing. "Extreme Flexo" allowed it to deliver more dots per inch, to print vignettes and to produce sharper illustrations than ever before. As a result, many customers were moving designs from gravure to "Flexo" to benefit from the lower plate costs and faster response times that were essential for today's market. Enditem