What happens when two new converting machines from Koenig & Bauer arrived on the production floor at BOPI? The late 2023 installation of the newest generation Koenig & Bauer Ipress 106 K PRO die-cutter and Allpro 110 folder-gluer elevated BOPI’s customer service to the highest degree at the Bloomington, IL printer providing a faster, more efficient delivery of jobs and the ability to offer folding carton work and extra capacity to trade printers.
“Ever since we installed both the Ipress 106 K PRO and Allpro 110, everyone has been quite pleased at the speed and automation of the equipment,” says Tom Mercier, Chairman, BOPI. “We needed equipment that was high powered enough to handle our capacity issues and didn’t limit us to a smaller sheet size. Our existing Rapida 106 press is consistently operating at 18,000 sph and we had bottlenecks in our post-press. After we visited Koenig & Bauer’s European factories to see both pieces of equipment in operation, we could see that they were top-of-the-line machines running four times faster than our current equipment.
“The Ipress 106 K PRO matches our Rapida press size and allows us to handle a larger sheet. We are also impressed with the inline stripping and automated blanking units that are the most technologically advanced. These particular features provide us with high-speed production perfectly combined with exceptional registration, high quality standards, and easy handling and fast preparation all saving us time and energy. Now our operators don’t have to take sheets to the cutter. It’s a finished product when it comes off the end. The Ipress 106 K PRO offers fast and efficient finished blanks that exit the machine for immediate processing to our Allpro 110. And it just makes perfect sense to work with our long-time press manufacturer.”
Left to right: Jeff Fritzen (Executive VP),Tom Mercier (Chairman) and Jeff Mercier (President).
For more than 75 years, BOPI has successfully served the Midwest markets of insurance, manufacturing, college and university, agricultural, hospital, financial, government, and non-profit organizations. Demand continues to rise in those markets but BOPI’s management team sensed some opportunities to diversify into folding cartons, explained Jeff Mercier, President. “We’ve been researching the folding carton market and feel it is a perfect fit for our workflow,” he said. “After producing some short run folding carton work on both pieces of equipment, we feel we’re ready to make the move into more folding carton orders. We see it as a growth area in the near future, mostly to brand new customers as well as a few existing customers.”
“Beyond our current customer marketplace, we envision being a supplier to the trade as well,” adds Jeff Fritzen, Executive VP. “There are printers that encounter opportunities that they can’t manage and this would enable us to work within the trade as well as providing finishing capabilities for their excess work for those who don’t have this equipment to do this type of work.”
“We’re a company built on servicing our customers in our verticals and we’ve formed great partnerships with our customers for decades,” says Mercier. “Investing in our new Koenig & Bauer converting equipment demonstrates to our customers that we’re able to offer new products for them as we enhance our own capabilities.”
