What Martin Automatic, Inc. Is and What the Company Does

Updated

Martin Automatic, Inc. is a manufacturer of automated roll-handling equipment for the printing and converting industry. Its core business is unwind/splice and rewind automation — machinery that lets a press or converting line keep running while rolls are changed, rather than stopping for every splice. The company is relevant to you if you run narrow- or wide-web roll-fed production (labels, tags, packaging, lottery and similar work) and want to cut downtime and manual roll handling.

The two product families

Martin Automatic's equipment falls into two functional groups, and the site's featured products show both:

Function What it does Featured examples
Unwind / splice Feeds material into the press and joins a new roll to the running web automatically, so printing continues without a stop MBS Butt Splicer, ECP Lap Splicer
Rewind / transfer Winds finished web onto new cores automatically and transfers without stopping the line LRD Automatic Transfer Rewind

The distinction between a butt splicer and a lap splicer matters when you choose: a butt splice joins the web end-to-end with no overlap, while a lap splice overlaps the two ends. Which one fits depends on your substrate and on how the downstream process tolerates a thickened splice point — the site presents both as separate products rather than one universal splicer.

Who the equipment is for

The customer evidence on the site points to roll-fed converters rather than a single niche:

  • Label converters — Nordvalls Etikett, described as one of Scandinavia's leading label suppliers with six production sites across northern Europe, has consistently chosen Martin unwind/splice technology for its presses.
  • Narrow-web and digital hybrid work — Desmedt Labels in Belgium was the first in the world to install a Mark Andy digital hybrid press fitted with Martin non-stop unwind/splice technology.
  • General converting and heavier substrates — Peters GmbH cites 60-inch diameter, 400-micron paper rolls that were heavy and slow to handle manually, with typically two changes per hour at about 10 minutes each; the MBX unit addressed that.
  • Smaller production environments — a production director at a Czech converter notes that the MBSC and STR are designed for smaller operations while still offering fully automated roll handling.

That spread is useful as a selection signal: the same automation principle is packaged differently for large wide-web lines, narrow-web label presses, and compact operations.

What problem it actually solves

The mechanism is straightforward. On a conventional line, every roll change means stopping the press, cutting the web, taping or splicing the new roll, and re-threading — minutes of lost output per change, multiplied by changes per shift. Automated unwind/splice equipment performs that join while the web is still moving, and transfer rewind swaps finished rolls without stopping.

The customer quotes on the site describe the payoff in two ways:

  • Throughput and ROI — Mischa Barthel (Barthel Group) reports improved productivity and fast ROI, plus a motivational effect on production teams who now deliver more saleable product with less physical effort.
  • Reduced manual handling — Achim Peters frames the gain as the difference between 10-minute manual changes twice an hour and automated roll changes on heavy rolls.

Note that these are vendor-published testimonials from named customers, not independent audits. Treat the productivity and ROI claims as directional and validate them against your own change frequency, roll weight, and substrate.

How to decide whether it's relevant to you

Use these conditions to judge fit before contacting the company:

  1. Your downtime is dominated by roll changes. If you change rolls frequently (the Peters example is twice per hour), automation has the clearest case. If changes are rare, the return is weaker.
  2. Your rolls are heavy or awkward. Large-diameter, thick substrates are where manual handling costs the most time and effort.
  3. Your press type matches a product family. Narrow-web label and digital hybrid presses, wide-web lines, and compact operations each map to different models (MBS, ECP, LRD, MBX, MBSC, STR).
  4. Your splice tolerance is known. Decide whether your process needs a butt or lap splice before shortlisting.

The site offers a full product brochure download and a "Browse All Featured Products" entry point as the practical next steps for model-level specifications. Pricing is not published on the pages reviewed, so cost and configuration need to come from a direct enquiry rather than assumption.