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Current issue      Features       Focus on Indonesia: Surabaya's Suppliers Filtrona/FIAL: Instruments, Initiative, and Innovation in Indonesia With a domestic market of 250 billion sticks per annum, ignoring Indonesia would be a foolish move by anyone in the tobacco industry. Even with the down and fractious Indonesian economy cutting those sales any large local manufacturers suffer heavy foreign exchange losses ?international giant Bunzl still sees the benefit of investing in the sixth biggest cigarette consuming nation in the world. The opening of the Surabaya Instruments Center by Filtrona Instruments and Automation Limited (FIAL) is not only a sign of the Filtrona/FIAL commitment to regional development. It is also an extremely shrewd move to provide a new generation of equipment to support its existing customer base in a growing market. The FIAL Instruments Center is the brainchild and labor of love of Hamish Pitt, president director of the Filtrona filter plant. Before the center's opening in September, Hamish had noticed that he had to release technicians from their duties at the Filtrona plant to deal with technical requests from Indonesian owners of FIAL equipment users in Indonesia. The Filtrona plant there handled FIAL's Indonesian business for over five years. Beyond the general inconvenience this caused to operations, Hamish, whose previous posting was Jordan, saw that it made good economic sense to have FIAL represented permanently here to service such good customers as Bentoel and Sampoerna. The September 8 grand opening of the center, attended by many of the Indonesian tobacco industry's top quality control experts, proved Hamish right. FIAL is best known for its integrated Quality Test Module (QTM) series. Launched in 1993, the QTM range is unique for its ability to adapt directly to the customer's business and is expandable as and when the customer's business requires. Each module is entirely self-contained and the system is suitable for use in the lab or at the point of production. Each module covers a specific task in rod or stick quality control, whether testing for hardness, roundness, draw resistance, circumference/diameter, moisture/density, or whatever. The advantage of the QTM system is that each module links to the next and an integrated hopper system takes further difficulties out of the operation. The QTM range also lends itself to any innovations in quality control that FIAL can dream up. One of which is the ability to adapt QTM modules to handle oval cigarettes, which are popular in Eastern European and CIS countries. Another new feature for the QTM range is the Freeway software package which enables quality control departments to coordinate all their test results very easily and is completely compatible with all existing QTMs. A main advantage is that instead of being a dedicated software system, Freeway runs on Windows, giving compatibility with virtually every desktop in existence. This will enable Quality Controllers to transfer data to any department, without having to set up additional dedicated stations. In addition the on-screen display is extremely user friendly, with easy-to-read graphics and information just a mouse-click away. However, FIAL抯 best new instrument for the quality controller is its state-of the-art ASM 500 smoking machine. Officially launched this November, Indonesian customers got a sneak preview at the center opening in September. With the ASM 500, FIAL went back to the drawing board, threw away the plans to its old machine, and built a brand new product. Not that there was much wrong with FIAL抯 old machine, as Tim Mason, FIAL's instrumentation design manager, explained to Tobacco Asia. Some of FIAL's old smoking machines run for over 20 years and, except for the odd update to take in new technology, they are one of the company's most enduring lines. However, with the more strenuous controls required these days, FIAL felt it was time for a new machine which could do everything that the old machine could do, only better, and a lot more besides. The first criteria which the designers decided upon was that the ASM 500 should not only qualify for ISO's new (and stringent) CORESTA-influenced standards, but should be 揻uture-proof.?This allows the ASM 500 to meet the needs of the industry today and tomorrow. If the history of FIAL's previous smoking machine is anything to go by, the ASM 500 should be with us for a very long time. Among the ASM 500's most radical diversification is the change from a centrally located single smoking engine to individual engines for each channel, or sequential linear smoking. This allows the 32-channel ASM 500 a far higher degree of accuracy. Its new user-friendly Windows software and increased automation, including digital butt-mark locator, integrated leak and volume checking, and a high-wattage bulb lighter which never touches the stick, also improves accuracy and reduces the likelihood of human error. The level of technological advancement in the ASM 500 is truly staggering; it is little wonder that FIAL's R&D department spent four years just thinking about it and another 22 months creating the concept. Almost a year of prototype testing helped to further develop the machine and there is still plenty of room inside if they happen to come up with something else. Puff-by-puff variation, to more closely simulate the way people smoke, has been a subject of informal discussions between FIAL and its customers and the ASM 500 has the basic requirements to allow for future upgrades of this nature. The ASM 500 also comes in 16-channel form which is better suited to the smaller lab, but offers the same flexibility and accuracy as the 32 channel version. For a bigger operation the 32 channel ASM 500, when properly arranged, takes up little more room than the old 20-channel version, not to mention making a cozy little chamber for your quality controller. P.P. Payne: Stripping Away the Counterfeiter's Edge On a three-minute stroll down the leafy Surabaya road from the Instruments Center, past Filtrona's filter plant, it is unsurprising to find Filtrona's other Bunzl stable-mate P.P. Payne. It's two-year-old plant here is another nod towards the group's belief in the Indonesian market. It is also another indication of how these three very different companies - though all part of Bunzl - have managed to create a very symbiotic working relationship. Both Payne and Filtrona are heavily involved in anti-counterfeiting work - work which has increasingly found the two companies working together. Filtrona's latest product to counter the counterfeiters is filter inserts: multi-colored, different-shaped plugs that can be an integral and unique part of each brand's design. Presently they supply a heart-shaped filter for one brand, but the unique marketing and anti-forgery elements are expected to make this innovation fly. P.P. Payne is, of course, the inventor of Supastrip?- a product that, though only invented sixteen years ago, now virtually dominates the cigarette tearstrip industry. Not to be caught resting on their laurels, the people in R&D at P.P. Payne have been busy developing Supastrip?XL. The XL suffix to the Supastrip?name means that they can now put an additional 30% more tape onto a jumbo reel. This comes through a new formulation of base film developed exclusively for Payne through a working partnership with its long-time film supplier. Film strength increases while maintaining print quality. The larger jumbo reel will, claims Garry Stiven, P.P. Payne's Asia regional director and general manager, add an estimated 30% to its running times, reduce lost time from reel changing, and - through this - improve every user's cost-efficiency. P.T. Trias Sentosa: Wrapped Attention The Indonesian company, PT. Trias Sentosa, hasn抰 much to complain about, despite Indonesia抯 fractured economy which has taken a remarkable tumble in the last year. However, a new fleet of white cars, parked outside of the OPP manufacturer抯 Surabaya headquarters, attests to Trias Sentosa抯 faith in the saleability of its new line of shrink heatsealable (HSS) overwrap, and a general buoyancy in the company抯 traditional OPP markets. Indeed, Trias Sentosa saw its export market double in the first half of 1998 - a combination of interest in its new product line and the massive devaluation of the Indonesian rupiah making export prices exceptionally attractive. The company抯 chief export markets are to the Asia Pacific countries: companies in China, Japan, Australia, and Hong Kong being among the largest international purchasers. However, it also has growing markets in the Middle East and Europe. Trias Sentosa抯 marketing manager, Budiono says, 揥e are looking for new customers in the U.S. and Europe and hope to build up our international markets in the future.?Despite the dramatic export growth, he says the company is not ready to rest on its laurels. 揥e need more exports,?says Mr. Budiono, matter-of-factly. Listed on the Jakarta and Surabaya Stock Exchanges since 1990, Trias Sentosa may well achieve its export sales. The company launches its international standard HSS film in January 1988, after winning ISO 9002 certification in 1995. This 21 micron BOPP is specifically designed for high speed tobacco overwrapping machines and its high gloss, low haze, two-sided shrink tightening capabilities are ideally suited to the hard pack market. 揟he industry抯 requirements are so much higher now than in the past, and I抦 confident that the HSS film is the ultimate product to supply international demand,? Budiono says. But the 60% export sales the company achieved in the first six months of last year is not to say the Trias Sentosa抯 local customers have been shy of trying out its new overwrap. Established in 1979, Trias Sentosa began production of BOPP film in 1984. In 1991, the company trebled production to 12,000 tons and the addition of a third BOPP line in 1993 saw that figure doubled. The company raised annual capacity again in 1996 to 16,000, when it completed construction on a fourth line. Trias Sentosa also manufacture 12,000 tons of polyester film per year and the company is now the largest manufacturer of polyester and BOPP films in Indonesia. Market looks good for quality suppliers in indonesia Under the circumstances, Filtrona, FIAL, and P.P. Payne could not operate in a better country. Indonesian cigarette manufacturers are under pressure not only to improve the efficiency and quality of their local brands, but also to take advantage of an economy which will favor exports ?possibly for a good few years to come. (Bentoel is in the planning stages of launching a new export brand; Djarum, with the help of Hugo Cassar抯 Kreteks International already plies the U.S. market with several brands.) To export to an international market, international standards of quality and packaging are required. FIAL抯 Instruments Center, joining P.P. Payne and Filtrona, will ensure that Indonesia and quality become synonymous.

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© Copyright 1999 By Lockwood Trade Journal Co., Inc.