How One Converter Went from Two Failing Machines to Ten Lung Meng Draw Tape Lines

Case at a Glance

Customer Profile

In flexible packaging, the gap between a converter who is barely holding on and one who supplies a national retail network usually comes down to a single decision: whether the machines hold up. This is the story of one converter’s decision over more than a decade, and what it cost him the first time he got it wrong.

What Two Low-Cost Machines Actually Cost

More than a decade ago, Mr. Shen bought two draw tape bag making machines from an unverified manufacturer in Asia, chosen on entry price. Within months they were failing on no fixed pattern: sometimes several times in a single day, on a good run a few days apart. Sensor faults, drive synchronization failures.

Worse than the stoppages was the wait. Getting an answer from the original manufacturer’s engineer online could take one to three working days, and sometimes longer, before the line ran again.

Output quality tracked uptime. The sealing units could not hold consistent temperature and pressure, so side seals split under light load, and the draw tape insertion drifted during running. The returns damaged something slower to repair than a machine.

Replacing One Line as a Test

After two bad machines he was not going to take a third supplier’s word for it, and replacing the whole floor at once was not an option either. So he changed one line and left the second one running. A single Lung Meng draw tape bag on roll converting system took over the first line as a test.

The difference showed in the first production week: seals held, draw tape position stayed inside tolerance, and the line ran a full shift without anyone standing over it.

Four Things That Changed on the Floor

That first line changed four things on the floor: seal consistency, output capacity, how maintenance was scheduled, and where his skilled people spent the day.

Seal quality held batch to batch

Across shifts, seal integrity and draw tape position stayed consistent enough to ship straight into high-turnover retail without re-inspection.

Output capacity rose to two to three times the original

Two to three times the old output, on the same floor space. Only part of that came from a faster line; the rest came from machines that needed virtually no stoppages for adjustment. Larger contracts on shorter lead times followed.

Maintenance moved from emergency to schedule

Heavy-duty construction put maintenance on the calendar instead of the fire-fighting list. Where the previous machines failed several times a day, unplanned stoppages became rare enough that the converter counts them as close to zero.

Labor moved from fire-fighting to quality control

The level of automation meant operators no longer had to watch the machines continuously, so skilled people went to inspection and logistics instead.

How the Line-Up Grew, Stage by Stage

Those four changes are why a second purchase happened at all. He did not buy ten machines at once. He bought one, and each stage decided the next.

Today his plant supplies a national retail network, and he has added ten Lung Meng draw tape lines in the past five years alone. A new five-story plant opens in 2027 with five complete production lines. What made the long-term contracts possible was not the price of the machines. It was that the lines kept running.

Who This Case Applies To

If any of these describe your situation, this case is close to yours:

• Medium to large-scale plastic bag manufacturers currently using other brands’ machines, looking for equipment with Asian pricing and European specifications.
• Customers struggling with low efficiency, high labor and maintenance costs, and low profit margins from traditional bag-making machines.
• Customers planning to expand their product lines and searching for stable, high-quality machinery.

Frequently Asked Questions

When evaluating a draw tape line upgrade or expanding capacity, converters frequently ask two practical questions:

Q: Which Lung Meng draw tape series runs at which speed?

The TAR Series (model TAR-900C) runs up to 200 m/min, and the TA Series runs at 160 m/min. Which one suits a given plant depends on the product, the target bag format and the rest of the line, so the fit is decided case by case rather than from the speed figure alone.

Q: Can one line produce more than one bag format?

Yes, and there are two different routes to it. S-Cut, interleaved and perforation are functions added to an existing configuration. T-shirt bag on roll is its own device, added later, which is how this converter opened an adjacent product category without changing supplier.

Which Model Fits Your Factory?

If you are interested, please feel free to contact us. We will recommend the most suitable machine model for your factory based on your specific requirements.

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Start with One Line

Mr. Shen’s line-up did not grow because a supplier promised more. It grew because the first line he replaced kept running, and every purchase after that was decided by what the previous one had already proved on his floor. If you are weighing the same decision, the place to start is one line, not a whole plant.

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