Adphos-Eltosch – curing capability

With nearly 40 years' experience in infra red, thermal air and UV drying technology, Adphos-Eltosch claims to offer systems to suit most curing applications and machine types in the sheet-fed offset market. The former Eltosch operation was acquired by Munich based Adphos in 2002.

Converting Today met with sales director Manfred Coordes in the company's new facility near Hamburg, which it moved into in May.

“Adphos is the sales company, and Eltosch is now an R&D operation,” he explained. “We concentrate on the design, development and process know-how, as well as installation. Manufacture and assembly is out-sourced to partner companies. This is a more efficient and cost effective way of meeting fluctuating market demand.” He revealed that a printing press is to be installed in the new premises for training, tests and R&D work.

“We can supply all the drying processes in combinations for sheet-fed offset at widths from 500mm upwards,” he affirmed. Wide width, high speed applications are our business. We are the sole supplier to MAN Roland, and have a development partnership with them. They account for more than 50 per cent of our business. We also supply many systems to KBA.

“The market has changed considerably in recent years,” he continued. “A lot of our business is now in Asia, with partner companies: Ryobi, as a main supplier, Mitsubishi, Sakurai and others. China is mainly printing applications at present, but the coating side is growing. We have just supplied equipment for a new plant being built there by a major European company. We also have many installations in the USA, and subsidiaries there, and in the UK and France. There is no direct business with the end user, we only deal with machine manufacturers,” he said.

“In converting we specialize in inert UV systems for siliconizing - that's most of the installations worldwide. We have an approximately 80 per cent market share. Degussa Goldschmidt is a major customer. Another application is cross-linking of coatings and adhesives - there are many projects with tesa and BASF. We also supply for standard coatings on webs for different industrial applications, mostly UV, silicone, laminating and adhesive coating.

“Our main development is the Twin Ray two-lamp UV system, which has very low heat radiation to overcome problems for heat sensitive substrates. It uses mirrors to minimize direct IR radiation to the substrate, while a rotary mirror and shutter system avoids unnecessary stops in production. It can also combine two different lamps to achieve different effects.” The Twin Ray has been developed in co-operation with Roland (which calls it Seccomatic Plus) and some 80 units have now been installed, he said.