Albert Leong is a proud rigid box manufacturer who writes a business success story with partner, Koom Lim Cheong, business acumen and latest technology lead by Longxingsheng machine.
Albert Leong was into die cutting business when he used to get lot of rigid boxes for die cutting on job work basis. Though rigid boxes as finished products used to fetch attractive price, Albert thought doing just die cutting wasn’t contributing as a sensible and acceptably rewarding business. He along with his friend Koom Lim Cheong, who is today a business partner, decided to dedicate a section of his factory to rigid box making. Starting with a cover pasting machine three years ago in 2016, they found opportunity in Moon Cake, a huge demand market.
Moon Cakes are always in huge demand during the mid autumn festival which the Chinese celebrate with lots of flamboyance and fervor. And these Moon Cakes are generally packed in rigid boxes for gifting during the festivities. So the duo decided to try and make the boxes themselves rather than actually do the job work of just die cutting. Thus started the story of these two friends who decided to take a plunge together into making rigid boxes – and they made it big too.
Albert, at a young age of 21 was already into free lance printing who would get the stationery material printed for corporate customers in Kuala Lumpur around the year 2004. He calls himself as a ‘mouse’ – one who would go to any place where ‘food’ is available – referring to his activity of getting the stationery jobs printed at the printers who offered him the best quality at the cheapest price. But then, he realised pretty quickly that it would not be possible to survive for long by being the ‘mouse’ that he was then he rightly decided to put up a production facility. “I felt a dire need of having an office where my customers can reach me to get their demands met and I too could serve them better from the office,” says Albert. He also identified that a formal place like own office was always a better place to negotiate business.
He soon expanded to include die-cutting capabilities to his facility where printers would come and get their paper/boards die-cut to shape using a custom made die. “In fact the die cutting venture has taught me much about printing. Its amazing nuances really helped me to step on to the next stage of business in my life, that is, rigid boxes,” he declares.
Without any formal training, learning on the job while practically doing it, committing mistakes, rectifying, doing it all over again are just few of the virtues of Albert – a self taught man with that determined Chinese resolve to pull him through and create success in business and life.
Meanwhile, Koo Lim Cheong, Albert’s Partner came from a family of printers who have been in this business since 1988. They had their printing setup in the same vicinity as ALKC Print Sdn Berhad in which Koo and Albert are partners. “Albert being in die cutting and I in printing makes a lot of sense for our collaboration to produce rigid boxes since all of our infrastructure, expertise, capabilities and finance synergise together to attain the intended goal of recovering our investment in the minimum possible time,” says Koo. In fact, Koo looks after the sales part of the Rigid Box business. He also looks after the printing of cover paper which is done at his press unless there are any size issues upon which they outsource to a common friend.
Today, Albert and Kim have a Chinese Longxingsheng brand rigid box making machine – LS-450 plus Automatic Visual Positioning in their relatively small yet well organised workspace near Kuala Lumpur city. “We do about 5000 sets (top & bottom) of boxes in an eight hour shift in the present setup despite having space constraints for storage of finished boxes,” reveals Albert. Albert was able to get almost similar productivity in his previous all manual system of production. However, the automation has helped him with obvious advantages like speed, accuracy and consistency apart from keeping at bay the possibility of human error. “Either you increase workforce and involve yourself in nitty-gritty’s of production or invest in a machine that automates processes to work and give you productivity and quality. We chose to go for the latter,” he adds.
ALKC Print Sdn Bhd. caters not only to the needs of direct customers but also to that of job workers who bring in the Cover and Boards for their boxes. “It is easier said than done to actually produce 5000 boxes a day and for that we are open to job work as well; after all we have to pay back the loans,” smiles Albert, who strongly believes that the ROI should not exceed two years. “Every trick in the trade should be implemented to recover the invested cost on machines within a couple of years or else it’s no point doing business at all, and we have been able to justify it as of now,” he emphasizes.
It was interesting to see a Konica Minolta colour printer and a vinyl cutting machine too at ALKC Print Sdn Bhd. “We use it for sampling of rigid boxes for a faster turnaround and also to show the customer a true-to-original type box and it has been a great add-on for us though both of these machines had other purposes, when we actually bought them,” reflects Albert. When asked as to what he thinks as the toughest part of the rigid box making process, he quickly says that the process of rigid box making, as in other production workflow, are a series of steps and any lag in any of the steps can finally cost you a lot. Therefore, in order to make sure that each step is fool proof, we have to develop systems and religiously adhere to them to save on cost and keep the profitability high,” he concludes.
Talking about future plans, he is clear about not going in for a fully automatic machine. “The Malaysian market is not too huge and the fully automatic does not actually fit in, though I am highly impressed by the recently launched Longxinsheng fully automatic model. Instead, we need a machine which has very less turn-around and setting up time leading us to manage many jobs in a day. For that, another LS-450 plus would be an ideal machine for us,” Albert reasons. With the present machines from Longxinsheng, the proud and successful rigid box manufacturer, Albert is able to achieve not only the desirable quantity but also quality to meet the present and future demands of his customers.
Longxingsheng: The rigid box packaging equipment specialist
Dongguan Longxingsheng Machinery Co., Ltd. is located in the city called the ‘world manufacturing city’ – Dongguan City in Guangdong Province in the Peoples Republic of China. The company is owned by a young and dynamic Mr.Charming. It also has an independent R&D department which is led by a Tsinghua University professor. The company specialized in semi-automatic post-press packaging equipment for more than 10 years. Cardboard/MDF/Paper grooving machine series, box forming set series and rigid box making machine series are three main products lines that the company promotes.
After having a dominant share in the Chinese market with installations in Hucai, Junsi, Yuto and other famous printing and packaging companies, today it has installations all across the world including RR Donnelley, Motivating Graphics, Pragati Offset, Star Print, Yuto, Tasin and many-many more. Quality consciousness is a hallmark of Longxingsheng and they leave no stone unturned to achieve the best. The company has been an exhibitor for the last few years at Drupa too making forays into the European market as well. The management of the company has special focus to provide professional high quality products and satisfactory after-sale service to our customers all across the world Including Korea, Africa, Egypt, Middle East, India and many more.
Talking to Industrial Print Magazine, Ms.Lyla Lu, The International Sales Manager of Longxingsheng said, “It has been an amazing journey for us with our machines producing Samsung phone boxes in Korea, gift/sweet/jewelry boxes in India, high value goods packaging in Middle East etc.” She also emphasized the fact that there is nothing like seeing a satisfied customer and she swears by the fact that most of her customers are – satisfied!
