Benjamit Metal Printing was founded in 1967 by five friends – Mr. Surin, Mr Thongchai, Mr Vichien, Mr Udom and Mr Anukul. Benjamit, which means “5 friends” in Thai, spent the majority of its first 30 years as a metal printer. The purchase of a production line for plastic cups in 1999, as well as a change to the company’s trading name in the same year, to Benjamit Packaging Co. Ltd, led to the company splitting their production between plastic packaging and metal decoration.
With these changes, the company has continued to grow. Their current site, which was purchased in 2000, is a 28,000 square meter facility based in the Nakhon Pathom region of Thailand, where their 550 strong staff are currently employed.
Thongchai Oranrigsupak is the Managing Director of Benjamit. He explains the journey the company have been on: “We’ve come a long way since first being established. We currently specialise in printing onto both metal and plastic containers, and offer years of know-how to our customers. Not only do we make the containers ourselves, but we print directly onto them, rather than using in-mold labels, which reduces our costs and means we keep control of the supply chain.”
As their product offering has evolved throughout their history, Benjamit has continued to invest in machinery to ensure their decorative products are of the highest quality, and to ensure they can meet customer demand with fast turnaround times.
The first of these big investments came in 1990, when they installed a Metal Printing Machine and Oven from Germany, built to increase the production capacity of metal cans. There was further investment in 2001 and 2003, before the company invested in a 4-lamp, 2-colour Crabtree metal decorating press in 2010, which came equipped with a GEW UV NUVA+ system.
In 2024, the UV curing system on the Crabtree was upgraded to a GEW NUVA2 system, with the aim of improving efficiency, lowering energy costs, and improving reliability compared to the 2010 system, where spare parts were harder to come by and increasingly expensive.
When discussing their initial purchase of the Crabtree in 2010, which came with GEW UV pre-installed, Thongchai explains why they made the decision at that time to move to a UV flexo press: “The two-colour Crabtree is a flexo press with UV after the 1st print unit as the ink has to be cured before moving onto the next station. After the 2nd print unit we have the 3 GEW UV lamps that give the final cure.
“Even when we bought the Crabtree in 2010, we had prior experience of UV from having this on the polytype container printing machines that we already had. When we bought that press from Crabtree, GEW’s UV was already installed and Crabtree were happy to explain all the benefits of UV for metal decorating, as well as their experience with UV installations. We felt confident, having heard what was on offer, that this press would add great value to our business. And we’ve been proven correct in this assessment.”
Discussing why they decided to upgrade the UV system on the Crabtree in 2024, Thongchai was frank: “The older system was becoming obsolete, with some of the spare parts for our 14-year-old system becoming harder to find and very expensive; this inevitably had knock on impacts on our productivity as the system became more unreliable. We re-invested in another GEW system because we believed in the company’s products, and we knew they offered great local support from their distributor, Press Systems, who we’ve worked with now for over 10 years. Another reason for choosing GEW was the availability of the air-cooled system, where other suppliers were offering water-cooled systems at this power level.”
Thongchai has been particularly happy with the local support Benjamit has received over the past 10 years from GEW’s Thai distributor, Press Systems: “I first met Jane (Tan, Owner of Press Systems) at Asia Cantech in 2014, and from there on Press Systems has been supporting us on the UV system with service support and spares. Press Systems has since grown to be a key supplier to us, as well as supplying UV inks.
“We have had some challenges over the years, but with the local support of Press Systems with their availability of being able to service and repair, especially the power supplies, this has been a great help.
“Press Systems were also really impressive when handling the installation, which looked very professional on completion. The upgrade took 4 days which included the removal of the old system, and then there was a further 2 days where they trained our staff to use the new system. Overall, they’ve been a brilliant partner for us.”
Regarding the system itself, Benjamit’s move from a 14-year-old NUVA+ system to a 4-lamp, 120cm NUVA2 system has brought obvious improvements to the company’s bottom line: “The change has led to an energy saving of >30% over the old system – this can’t be overstated from a cost perspective. But the speed increase, from 3000sph to 5000sph, also represents a huge productivity improvement for us, allowing us to serve more customers, more quickly.
Asked whether he could ever go back to printing without UV, Thongchai was clear: “Conventional does give similar results in terms of the print outcome, there’s no doubt about that. But the process is nowhere near as efficient or quick as with UV, and the oven takes up so much space in our factory, as well as adding to our gas usage.
“And, if carbon footprint is important to you, UV is a must with the energy savings available. I would highly recommend UV, and we look forward to using UV LED in future, once it is proven to work on metal.”
To learn more about GEW’s NUVA2 curing system for the toughest printing applications, go here.
