Increasing Pack Demand Prompts Superwide Press Buy

Wah Sang has just become the second company in China to install a superwide 1,200mm x 1,620mm KBA Rapida 162a sheetfed press in a move demanded by customers.

Wah Sang has just become the second company in China to install a superwide 1,200mm x 1,620mm KBA Rapida 162a sheetfed press in a move demanded by customers.

"Products were becoming larger and the demand for an increase in package box size made us realise that we needed a very wide offset press.

Having had such a good experience with our existing two KBA presses we naturally turned to the company for the large machine, and were delighted with what we saw," said Wah Sang managing director Christine Lam.

Lam continued: "Our production engineers went over the KBA 162 with a fine toothcomb.

They came away with the impression of a machine built to the highest specifications, with engineering quality, production ability and print quality of the highest order.

Each sheet we print has to be of perfect quality from the start of the run to the finish, as the printed image has to convey quality, reliability and consistency.

We believed the KBA 162 would deliver those requirements, and so it has proved." Such was the growth in Wah Sang's offset printing that the new press came as entirely additional capacity, it did not replace an existing press, and it has enabled the company to bring all the work in-house that it used to contract out.

Christine Lam added: "By installing the KBA 162a we have gained a significant competitive advantage in what is a highly competitive arena.

Our customers have welcomed the opportunities the new size press have given them.

For ourselves we have more efficient production and another opportunity to grow our market.

KBA has proved itself to us a press manufacturer capable of delivering exactly what we require, capable of understanding our needs and capable of being our partner in our growth." KBA said that Wah Sang's customer list is a who's who of the world's major electronic products manufacturers, with Brother, Philips, Canon, IBM, Sony, Toshiba, Ricoh, Minolta, Sharp, Kodak, NEC, Samsung, Sanyo, JVC and Epson, amongst the manufacturers for which the company produces packaging.

Lam added: "Our customers stay with us because we deliver the highest quality products and processes.

A substantial part of this is our offset printing, for which KBA has proved to be an excellent partner." The company has operated two KBA Rapida medium-format presses as the centrepiece of its offset printing production for some time.

The Wah Sang company has come full circle in recent years.

It moved from China to Hong Kong 45 years ago and with a workforce of three people owner Lam Pak Cheung opened his box making business on Kowloon, with each box made by hand.

Then, 17 years ago it moved back from Hong Kong to China, in to the new economic zone of Shenzhen.

The Wah Sang company is now very different, with 1,000 employees producing packaging in three shifts 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week.

Wah sang is now run by Christine Lam, the daughter of Lam Pak Cheung.

During the years in Hong Kong the business grew and its activities expanded, at one point it was making most of the playing cards the enthusiastic gambling population of Hong Kong was using.

The company also developed packaging for Hong Kong Chinese to mail back goods that were in short supply in China, such as light bulbs and even oil.

Christine Lam said: "My father was always very careful with the business, taking things one step at a time.

Every seven or eight years he would move in to a new larger factory.

He was, though, a pioneer, always looking at new ways to provide solutions for his customers, and I like to think that the company I have today is the same, we believe in customer service going beyond the basics and on to providing our customers with proactive solutions to help their businesses." Whilst Hong Kong boomed in the 1970s and 1980s, by the time the 1990s came around land and labour had both become relatively expensive, so many of Wah Sang's major customers were beginning to make the move over the border in to China, where land and labour were both available in plenty for new businesses.

Lam said: "Our customers told us they were moving and asked us to move with them, a move which made sense for us for the same reasons that attracted them.

There was little in the way of space limitation." Wah Sang began as a box maker, with its own corrugating machines using direct flexo printing, but had begun to use offset printing in Hong Kong.

Today 60 per cent of the company's activity is in corrugating, the company has two complete corrugated production lines, but a growing amount of its work is offset printing.

Currently 40 per cent of the company's activity is in offset printing, with KBA the press manufacturer of choice.

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