The emerging markets of Asia are increasingly important to Polar and Heidelberg with both companies making considerable investment into Asia with the establishment of Heidelberg and Polar manufacturing factories in Qingpu, China. These plants provide China and also the wider Asia markets with high quality products that are supported by Heidelberg’s extensive sales and service network.

As with the Heidelberg factory in Qingpu, the Polar factory is designed to produce products that are of equal quality and durability to those produced in Germany ensuring quality control and the companies’ reputations.

Mr. Jürgen Freier is Polar’s Managing Director, Sales & Service and is based in Hofheim, Germany. He has been in this role since the beginning of 2012 and continues to be excited about the opportunities for growth in Asia, a market that currently represents 30 percent of Polar’s global turnover.

“Today it is essential to have a strong, on the ground presence in China, which is the biggest market in the world,” says Mr. Freier. “The most important focus for our Qingpu production facility is quality - the Polar brand’s reputation is built on quality. We ensure that key staff are trained at our plant in Germany and that all the components meet the same high standards of the German factory.”

Currently the Qingpu production plant produces only a limited range of machines, primarily the Polar 115XC Plus and Polar 137XC Plus guillotines and a small range of peripheral handling equipment designed to reduce manual labour, lower overheads and increase productivity.  

Across Asia there are a significant number of Polar machines in operation representing around 40 percent of the quality market, and Heidelberg offers the full range of Polar products to its customers from the small format cutters through to the highly automated large format Polar guillotines and the highly productive in-line die cutting systems exclusive to Polar.

Mr. Freier says part of the company’s motivation to manufacture in China and to increase its presence in Asia, is to counter the flood of low quality, low price machines on the market that are compromising printing companies in their ability to produce quality goods.

“In China there are a lot of cutters produced by local manufacturers and sold at very low cost. It is not until the accuracy of the cut sheet is checked that the differences in construction and quality are seen. Generally these machines have a very short life and are often discarded in favour of a quality machine like the Polar – we offer spare parts for up to 25 years, that’s how confident we are of the robust construction and longevity of our machines,“ he says.

New Solutions for Growth Markets
Polar is well established and therefore ideally positioned to invest in research and development to meet demand shifts in the market and to tap into growth segments. “We know that the Asian market is very dynamic and adapting extremely fast. As a company we observe very carefully the development of growing market segments such as short run digital and label production and consequently we have developed new machines and solutions to meet these demands. We are also aware that our customers are looking to maintain quality, and at the same time lower labour costs and speed up time to market, and we factor these objectives into our product development also”.

At Drupa12 Polar introduced a number of new releases including two new guillotines for the short run digital market – the Polar 56 and Polar 80 cutters, which join the Polar 66, one of the company’s best selling machines in this segment. And for the first time in the company’s history Polar introduced a book trimmer, the BC 330, which can trim all three sides of a book using a single knife.

In the label production segment Polar has extensive expertise with die cutting label systems. Labels, both square cut and die cut such as labels found on the front and neck of beer bottles, are without doubt one of the most demanding cutting jobs that a printer can undertake as accuracy is imperative. In bottling and canning factories the labelling process must be carried out at very high speed. To achieve this the labelling machine demands the highest level of accuracy and tolerance to avoid jamming and the consequent halting of the entire production line.  
 
Polar has an extensive range of both square cut and die cut label systems to satisfy the most demanding requirements, including those of in-mould labels where the substrate fights against the operator at every opportunity.

Polar also produces an off-line die cutting machine the DC-M for smaller volumes of labels and the DC11, a complete inline system which takes printed sheets at one end and produces banded packs of labels at the other.    

“Our Die Cutting Label system, the DC 11, is now 50 percent more productive with the enhancements released at Drupa12,” says Mr. Freier. “This will enable many customers to reduce production costs since the same quantity can be done in far less time.”

In conclusion he says, “As labour costs in Asia increase, being able to reduce production time and increase capacity will become even more critical to profitability. Companies want to invest in quality products that will stand the test of time and enable them to meet the increasing demands of their own customers. As such we are confident that Asia will continue to be a high growth market for Polar well into the future”.