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THE MAGAZINE FOR FORWARD THINKING PRINTINGNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020

Explore more…COVER STORY Cartons from commercial could come from coronavirus.DIGITAL Making moves in nimble markets.ICONS SM102 perfector: both sides of the story.Explore more at printbusiness.co.uk

www.printbusiness.co.uk November/December 2020 3

THE EDITOR’S COMMENT

THE MAN IN THE HAT, GARETH WARD

has been the editor of Print Business

since its second issue in 2005. Five years

later he took control of the magazine in a

management buyout and fully achieved

his vision to create a unique publication

for printers.

What Print Business does is take all this

information – supplied via press releases,

announcements at events, word of mouth

or good old fashioned journalism – sorts

the puffery from the facts, weaves it

together and puts it into context for those

who run print businesses.

At the heart of everything that Print

Business publishes are the printers. Those

whose businesses are no longer about

simply feeding paper into a giant lump of

highly engineered metal and selling the

sheet that comes out the other end. Those

who face myriad decisions, some of which

point in opposite directions, and need to

know more than how fast it prints, what

the click charge is or how much it costs.

They need to know what affects them

and how. Just as every print job is bespoke,

every print company is different. There is

no one-size-fits-all in this industry.

Before Covid, Gareth Ward was out

and about all the time. He went to print

factories and talked to printers in their

language. He has seen first hand the

problems they face, the solutions they find,

their achievements and their innovation.

He has finally been able to safely visit

some factories.

Before Print Business, Gareth Ward

worked on the leading weekly magazine

Printing World for 22 years and was editor

for 15. It is this experience, and 360° view

of the industry, that gives him his sixth

sense about printing. His ability to spot

trends, often years before they become

apparent in the mainstream, is legendary.

This is Print Business, the magazine for forward thinking printing.

SEEK THAT SILVER SEEK THAT SILVER BULLET FOR THE BULLET FOR THE VALUE VAMPIREVALUE VAMPIREONCE THE PANDEMIC IS OVER, there

is sure to be a huge focus on the success of

certain companies as part of the inquest

into Covid, and not just those that seem to

have benefitted from PPE supply contracts.

Already it is clear that Netflix, that Zoom

and Amazon, DHL and the like, have

enjoyed extraordinary growth, winning

while their street bound rivals have been

frozen out and prevented from trading.

Should these businesses pay a windfall tax

on the unplanned for revenue achieved?

Because for these internet giants and

other disruptors like Uber, business-

as-not-normal is part of their strategy.

Professor Michael Wade from the IMD

business school, describes them and their

actions as Value Vampires. They enter a

market not only with the aim of disrupting

it, but of sucking every last drop of profit

from that space. Ultimately no other

business can survive and having achieved a

monopoly position they can begin to earn

the real profits.

Their proposition is built on efficiency,

on software, on big data, on servers, not

on shops with staff and storerooms out the

back, not on cars because those driving for

Uber pay for those. Expanding a business

in these conditions is relatively simple;

shrinking it again equally so.

Fortunately while Amazon can sell and

print books, while it can sell and print

stationery items and sell and print T-shirts

and other apparel, it cannot become the

Value Vampire in the printing industry. It

would need to invest in heavy machinery,

and its business model does not support

this approach. And if Amazon is not

inclined to drain the profit pool in print,

nobody else will come into the market in

the near future.

This does not mean there can be no

Value Vampires in print. Just that there will

be no dominant Count. Online purchasing

of print is going to soar, based on making

the specifying of print via a web page

easier than ever, on transparent prices and

because people are becoming accustomed

to buying all manner of products online, a

trend that has accelerated in recent months.

But even Cimpress, by far the largest of

these businesses, will not invest in enough

machinery to achieve worldwide market

domination across the printing industry,

to suck the market dry. The online world

has enough head room for even those late

to the party, though it gets more expensive

to achieve brand recognition for the

latecomers.

Richard Pepper, founder of Funky

Pigeon, reckons that the greetings card

market in the UK is worth £1.6 billion and

that currently only 10% of that is bought

online. He also reckons that establishing

a brand that consumers recognise is

expensive, and Funky Pigeon commits

17% of revenues to marketing – something

absolutely unheard of in the printing

industry.

Online, however, is not the printing …

www.printbusiness.co.uk

4 November/December 2020 www.printbusiness.co.uk

COMMENT GARETH WARD’S THOUGHTS ON…

industry. Those buying the millions of

leaflets, hundreds of thousands of books,

gazillions of business cards from an online

printer, do not think they are buying print

and have little if any interest in the process.

This limited range of products is already

big business, let alone when point of sale,

promotional items, cartons, pouches,

training manuals, calendars, T-shirts and

more are included. These are the products

that individuals and small businesses want

and need and they are going online to find

them. Online print is only at the start of its

journey.

Not everything, not even greetings cards,

can be standardised in this way. There

will be room for commercial printers to

handle the jobs that go beyond the online

templates, that are using more tailored

materials, additional inks and finishing

processes, provided they understand where

their strengths lie and what they can offer.

But if some commercial printers are

immune, for now at least, from the online

printers, they are not immune to attack

by Value Vampires. In print these are the

companies that have extracted profit before

the job reaches the press and without

delivering any real value to either customer

or supplier. The most recognisable of

these, the Christopher Lee of the genre, is

the print management company.

When they first swooped in, the message

to printers was enticing. Working with us

you can fill that spare machine capacity that

you have, and because your costs have been

covered by your normal work, this can be

taken at marginal cost because margins in

print are good. It was an enticing offer and

many, many printers agreed. But for many

it has proved a bargain with the devil and

they became hooked on the volumes from

print management, so what was marginal

but added to profits was now draining those

profits.

The message to brands and corporates

from the print management companies

was even starker: We will save you 30%

of your print spend. In the early days this

was simple, a matter of consolidating work

and directing jobs to the most efficient

producer. Subsequent deals with a similar

promise squeezed the money available to

printers even further, but there was still no

shortage of takers. There was an echo of

the anti-heroin advertising campaign of the

1980s where the addict confidently asserts

‘I can handle it’. Printers were hooked.

Now the promise of reducing a client’s

marketing spend means eliminating print

altogether and convincing the corporate

that digital – whether online advertising,

website banners or SMS – is better value

than print. Facebook and social media have

become the channels of choice and ‘likes’

the currency that proves the effectiveness

of the message. Only it doesn’t. And now

perhaps, one of the beneficiaries of the

pandemic could be print. All the positive

attributes that we have also known about

print – it is tangible, it is always on, it is

browsable, it creates emotions, it is largely

distraction-free – are being rediscovered by

a new generation.

Only print risks remaining a victim of

PUBLISHING Print Business is published six times a year by Print Business Media Ltd Haymakers, Swamp Road, Romney Marsh TN29 9SQ | 01580 236456 | [email protected] www.printbusiness.co.uk

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EDITORIAL Editor/Publisher | Gareth Ward | [email protected] | 01580 236456 | 07866 470124Press releases should be sent to [email protected]

COMMERCIAL Publisher | Debbie Ward | 01580 236500 | [email protected]

ADMIN & SALES SUPPORT Publishing Assistant | Sarah Cross | 01580 236456 | [email protected]

MEDIA INFORMATION The Media Pack is available under the Information tab at PrintBusiness.co.uk

…

HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC AS A PRINT? At an online round table Gareth Ward took his hat off to Ricoh and some prominent printers and found out what has worked and what will change going forward, whatever forward might mean. page 36


mailto:[email protected]

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…HOW PRINT MUST GO #BEYONDA4 COMMENT

this value chain. A corporate marketing

department has a budget to launch a new

product or service and wants to use print.

It has a choice of three or four marketing

agencies it works with and trusts. In turn

each of these has a number of designers

they work with and the designers have

relationships with a half a dozen printers.

At each level the intermediary takes its

profit and slice of the budget so that the

printer, who physically creates something

on expensive machinery instead of an

equally expensive designer leather chair, is

left with a few crumbs.

Looking out from the 15th floor corner

office, the brand director who instigated

the campaign may see perhaps 50 printers

in the distance any of whom may end up

printing his job, but from that range none

of them stands out. Like the peasants

around a castle in Transylvania, printers

are going to suffer in the face of these

vampires.

What then can printers do to defeat the

Value Vampire? First printers must make

themselves visible so that they are not

just another face in the crowd of almost

identical businesses. And the lowest price is

not a strategy to do this, even if you are the

most efficient.

Offering the best quality is not the

answer either: best quality is subjective,

most consistent quality is objective. Use

that. In any case the latest presses from

Xerox will download settings from the

cloud for any paper and any job. As a result

any printers running the same job on these

presses will print identically. The same will

be true for Landa and a growing number of

print technology providers. Only when you

venture into extended colour gamuts with

additional violets, greens or oranges can

printers achieve a discernible difference.

Even the idea that this is extra value print

is possible may help achieve the sought for

differentiation.

Or it could be the range of services

under one roof, say large format printing

where output on the flatbed inkjet machine

is perfectly colour matched to output

on a litho press. It might be an easy to

understand and use web to print platform.

Or any number of things that matter to

the buyer more than just price. That the

print business is in its fourth generation of

family ownership holds little water for a

21st century buyer of print.

The other action to avoid the Value

Vampire is a move to control more of that

value. Famously St Ives did precisely this,

migrating into print management and

then into research, websites, campaign

management et al for retailers and brands.

It realised how much, or how little, margin

there was in its print division. And sold it.

That is an extreme example, but moving

upstream into design and marketing, either

through organic or acquisitive expansion,

will achieve a bigger slice of the margin

pie. Pureprint’s action in acquiring a

photography business is an example and

there are others. Not everything a printer

produces has to be on paper any longer. At

one time print was the communications

business. Today print is part of that much

larger communications business and there

is no rule that says a print business cannot

become a communications business,

supplying expertise across a number of

channels and delivery methods.

Thinking like this immediately puts

the printer in the shoes of his customer,

looking at the problem as more of a holistic

challenge, not a decision to wallop the

poor printer yet again. And thinking like

this is garlic to the Value Vampires. After

all, anything might happen if printers

rediscover the power they have. And who

wants that?

NEWS The Monday morning News ezine is a popular collection of a handful of the week’s news, always going beyond the press release and often exclusive. GDPR by the letter and spirit. Sign up at printbusiness.co.uk/Register

SUBSCRIPTIONS Print Business is currently free to qualifying UK printers. Subscriptions for those who would like to contribute to securing the future of Print Business are available under the Information menu at bit.ly/2IlJxSS

EVENTS Print Business is the organiser of Forward Thinking Printing, round tables and more. Gareth Ward is in demand for hosting, chairing and generally being an accomplished ringmaster. Apply for details on 01580 236456.

CONTENT Content is copyright © Print Business Ltd 2005-2020. All rights reserved.

ARCHIVE Previous issues are available for a modest fee. See the Archive page under the Information tab at PrintBusiness.co.uk for downloadable and searchable PDFs.

TERMS Apply for terms & conditions to [email protected]

IF THINKING DIFFERENTLY is the order of the day, Iain Bullock takes top prize for breaking out of the way Renz has ‘always done things’ and moving. Not just location but the mindset to a more efficient way of working. page 46


printbusiness.co.uk


6 November/December 2020 www.printbusiness.co.uk�

INFORMATION/TECHNOLOGY

CCL backs digital print for cartonsCCL INDUSTRIES IS poised to become the world’s largest producer of digitally printed cartons, following completion of its acquisition of Graphic West International.

Graphic West International has developed and perfected a digital carton production line, based initially around Xerox iGen print engines, combined with inline die cutting and creas-ing, and folder gluers together with inspection technology and software to be able to produce small batches of pharmaceutical cartons on demand.

Jesper Holm, founder of Graphic West International, initially struggled to convince converters and brands that digital printing and finishing for small batches of cartons was possible. It has since set up operations in Denmark, Poland, the US and in 2015 set up a greenfield operation inside one of the CCL packaging plants in Montreal. It attracted invest-

ment from private equity in return for a minority stake.

Announcing the deal, CCL Industries president and CEO Geoffrey Martin says: “GWI shares our philosophy of digitising workflows and manu-facturing technologies with complete focus on the unique needs of customers in this sector.”

Holm and the patents that are used to protect the develop-ment are now part of CCL. And having proved that the concept works and that pharmaceuti-

cal companies are happy with the quality, CCL will now be rolling out the technology worldwide. “We look forward to take this exciting new concept to healthcare customers globally alongside our highly comple-mentary label products,” Martin says.

The driver is both to reduce stockholdings of pharmaceuti-cal packaging through print on demand, so avoiding the risk of printed packaging reaching the market; improved control of batches by printing identifica-

tion and tracking information directly on the carton without the need for a label.

As well as labels, CCL produces the patient informa-tion leaflets that are folded inside the cartons. CCL is a substantial user of HP Indigo presses for label printing and there is no reason why these would not be suited to this application.

The C$36 million deal needed and received regulatory approval before completion. It has now become CCL Speciality Cartons and falls under the remit of Günther Birkner, president of CCL Healthcare and Special-ity (as well as Innovia films and CCL Food & Beverage). He has endorsed Martin’s sentiments. “With the help of Jesper Holm, GWI’s founder, we are eager to expand this product offering globally,” he says.

Up to 18 sites have been earmarked as suitable for digital carton production in the short term.

Digital printing of cartons, as here at Qualvis, has not taken off as predicted. The CCL Labels deal may change that.

Dalim reopens doors in the UKDALIM IS RETURNING to have direct representation in the UK to look after customers of Dalim ES, the asset and project management successor to Twist and Drive, a new application suited to high speed inkjet printing.

Colin Price, one of the UK’s most experienced technology sales executives, is managing director of Dalim UK, following on from a period of consulting for the Franco-German software business at the start of this year.

“I’d sold a lot of Dalim systems when working for Turning Point Technologies 20 years ago,” says Price. “I had to get up to speed, researched the

market and its potential and fell in love with the product again.”

ES works through internet protocols “and automates and strengthens the collaboration and approval cycles across stake-holders and people working from home” says Price, “which requires integration with other systems.”

Dalim also has an eye to a post Brexit future and minimising any disruption that this might cause. Dalim CEO Carol Werlé says: “We consider the transi-tion of support from Germany to a UK entity a very signifi-cant investment. As new rules of commerce could affect how business is consummated in the future, this will assure that there will be no interruption of service to the entire UK market

and our customers. By placing a physical presence in the UK, our support is much closer — and faster.”

Iridesse pair bring sparkle to ClarkeprintCLARKEPRINT, Birming-ham, has replaced older digital presses with a brace of Xerox Iridesse machines to enhance the creativity capabilities offered to customers.

The two Xerox machines were delivered at the start of the lockdown and have been pressed into service with measurable impact.

Director Gary Franklin says: “For me productivity is key, as I’m the guy on the shop floor,

responsible for completing jobs on time.

“They have come as a welcome relief and made a significant difference. Not a subtle difference but a massive difference.

“Last year we had to work 24 hours around the clock to achieve certain deadlines and this year we didn’t have to put on any night shifts, and we finished two weeks early.”

The company has cut the number of waste sheets due to poor quality and has opened up the opportunity to print A4 landscape brochures more cost effectively and with a faster turnaround.

The quality means that Clarkeprint can take shorter run work from litho increas- …

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Muller Martini unveils digital ready stitching lineMULLER MARTINI IS calling its latest saddle stitcher the Prinova. The 9,000cph machine is a replacement for the Presto II in the portfolio and is aimed at fast turnaround short run litho print, where the need is to handle multiple jobs an hour.

This is the first Muller Martini stitcher to use servo motors to drive each of the feeders indepen-dently of the others. Currently this technology is being used to reduce makeready times. The Prinova can support 14 feeders, each with a deep pile feed for long term running before any need to refill the hopper.

Muller Martini reckons that this means the line can be super-vised by a single operator. This is how the machine is demon-strated on a video that will be part of Muller Martin’s virtual presence on the global Printing-Expo website.

Set up uses JDF data and a touch screen which guides the operator through the sequence of adjustments needed to move from one format to another. Once the job is set up and the single-copy sample job is checked, the operator moves it to production mode and the line will run the number taken from the JDF job file, stopping automatically when this figure is reached.

The Prinova also uses tech-nology developed for the established Primera range. This includes Asir Pro automatic signature recognition technol-ogy. A camera monitors the page it sees, comparing this to the page it expects to see. This can be either from an identify-ing bar code or an image of the page. Any deviation, a different language, for example, will result in a rejected copy.

The Prinova has been running in beta test conditions at a trade binder in Switzerland for more than six months. It found the Asir system worked perfectly, while other features were appreciated. “Having all of the settings on a centrally located and large touchscreen instead of all over the place is a huge advan-tage,” says Yannick Bucher, the managing director of Schär Druckverarbeitung.

The servo motors also point the way to the introduction of full automation at some point in the future, including operating in harness with a digital press, creating fully variable products on the fly.

Details of the production run are uploaded to the Connex to be examined across a number of jobs or as an individual job, sending further details to the company’s MIS.

ing operational flexibility by enabling a greater crossover between the two technologies.

The presses were supplied by Xeretec. The concessionaire for Xerox talked Clarkeprint through the options, focusing on the quality, consistency, the longer sheet capabilities and the ability to print up to eight colours with the Iridesse.

Print scores for LiverpoolCHOCOLATE manufacturer Cadbury has shipped 50,000 chocolate bars to fans to cele-brate Liverpool FC’s Premier League trophy in 2020, using personalised packaging produced by DFP Solutions, one of Germany’s leading digital flexible packaging producers and by Danaflex, a leading Russian exponent of digital flexible packaging print. Each bar used Smart Stream Designer to handle the small variations to make each unique.

Xeikon adds pace with inkjetXEIKON HAS LAUNCHED a top of the range inkjet label press, capable of taking volume from flexo printers and rounding

out a range that now comprises three machines in the Panther portfolio.

The new machine is the PX30000, capable of 70m/min on a 340mm wide web. It comes in two configurations: a seven-colour and six-colour version offering a high opacity white as well as orange and violet for extending the gamut of the press.

The set up includes Xeikon’s Panther Cure UV XT inks and X800 DFE with function-ality for impositioning and further processing of the labels. Otherwise the mechanics, the printheads, and web handling are provided by Domino, which originally developed the press as the N630 inkjet press.

The press runs at 70m/minute in productivity mode, 50m/min when running the two white colour bars and at its maximum

resolution of 1200dpi. LED lamps are used to pin the white and then the colours ahead of a GEW unit for a final cure before re-reeling.

As befits the target market of flexo printers migrating to high productivity digital, the press copes with 1 metre diameter reels at either end. The seven-colour option covers 92% of the PMS range and with violet, includes Reflex Blue.

Brexit will hit ink costs says BCFPRINTERS MUST BRACE for a rise in ink prices unless a comprehensive free trade agree-ment can be agreed between UK and EU officials.

According to the British Coatings Federation, tariffs that would be automatically

…

…

Xeretec has supplied two Iridesse machines to Clarkeprint.

Muller Martini has a virtual showroom at Printing-Expo.online

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Charlesworth seeks new home as landlord sells upTHE LAND AND FACTORY units occupied by Charlesworth Press in Wakefield have been put on the market by the company’s landlord, described by the agent handling the sale as “a private family client”.

The 2.2 acre site includes four factory units amounting to a 4,360m2 print factory. The lease expires in August next year.

Charlesworth Press would like to stay on the site and has made an offer to the private landlord, but says that it has received no feedback to date. On the other hand, Rob Oliver, principal at Avison Young in Leeds which is marketing the asset, says: “We are delighted with the interest received to date.” He points out the enhanced power supply to

the site, needed for presses and finishing equipment, adding: “This property offers a rare opportunity to acquire premises suiting production use.”

Mark Gray, chief executive of Charlesworth Press, says he is exploring all options. Nothing will be in place before the end of the year following what should be a frenetic period for

the personalised books that the company produces and which led to investment in a dedicated case binding line last year.

Even then the company will have eight months to make long term arrangements. He says :“We are trying to utilise the move or purchase of property to align with future plans. We are looking at acquisitions of other printing businesses where prop-erty is involved as well as other property as the business does not want to rent going forward. We are not ruling anything out at the moment.”

The location is at the centre of further development with, what the agent says, are high quality neighbours. “On the adjacent site, Frank Marshall Estates is

commencing construction of a new business park and indus-trial estate, whilst further up the road, Sewtec has recently relo-cated into a 7,000m2 production facility,” says Oliver.

“PLP has also started construction on two new specu-lative warehouse units on the former Silkwood Park at PLP Wakefield, demonstrating there is ample appetite in this area for quality industrial units.”

Whatever the final outcome, Gray is keen to remain local. “Wakefield MP Iran Ahmed Khan and his staff are working closely with us to try and insure that the business stays within the Wakefield Council,” he says. “But we have to see what happens in the coming months.”

Harry Potter diary is one of the personalised books that Charlesworth has specialised in.

be applied to imports and exports of inks, coatings and paints would increase prices immediately. Based on the global tariff system the BCF estimates that inks imported from the EU will be charged an additional £14.2 million. It says that 89% of ink imports into the country come from the EU.

In the other direction, ink producers in this country face tariffs of £11.7 million for the 52% of exports that end up in EU member states. This would make their products uncompeti-tive compared to most rival EU producers.

BCF CEO Tom Bowtrell warns: “The UK coatings sector trades heavily with the EU. If tariff-free trade is not agreed as part of an FTA then the coatings industry across Europe will see added costs of £75 million in finished products alone. The added tariff costs to raw materials are also likely to run into the tens of millions of pounds, and that will hit UK

businesses harder than those on the Continent.”

B’s backed by Geoff NealGEOFF NEAL GROUP has become an official partner to Brentford FC as the Champi-onship club moves into a new stadium. Under the two-year deal the Feltham print group will supply the club’s bespoke printing requirements includ-ing welcome packs for the 10,000 season ticket holders and premium seat tickets.

DMS switches to Canon inkjetDATA MAIL SOLUTIONS has installed two Canon inkjet machines, including the first iX3200 to be installed in the UK.

The Crawley company has until now been an all Xerox company with iGen150 technol-ogy alongside a reelfed Rialto

inkjet press and a recent installa-tion of a Xerox Baltoro cut sheet inkjet press. “DMS is partner-ing with Canon for the first time due to the need for increased reliability and to cover a combi-nation of transactional, direct mail and high quality coated commercial applications,” says the official announcement.

“Its varied customer base and its wide range of requirements led the team to consolidate production across two new Canon machines, the VarioPrint i300 and VarioPrint iX3200, as

well as an extensive range of web fed and sheetfed offset litho equipment.”

The company also operates a ten-colour Speedmaster for inserts, door drops and other high volume print and an eight-unit narrow web offset press.

Some of the litho work can be moved to the iX3200, believes managing director Simon Smode. “I am very excited about what the iX3200 will bring to the business, from its exceptional quality to the flex-ibility of migrating small and medium litho runs.”

Currency extension for De La RueTHE BANK OF ENGLAND has extended its print contract with De La Rue for a further three years. The contract involving the Bank of England Printing Works at Debden was due to expire in 2025 and will now continue to 2028

…

…

DMS has switched from Xerox with an order for two Canon inkjet presses.

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Henry Ling leads with Canon’s flagship inkjetBOOK PRINTER HENRY Ling has become the first in the UK to install Canon’s flag-ship ProStream 1000 inkjet press, enabling it to offer higher quality digital printed colour books, including colour trade books as well as STM volumes.

The Dorchester company has been using a ColorStream from Canon since 2013 and has a relationship with the supplier that dates back to 2006. When Henry Ling wanted to step up the quality of inkjet printing, Canon was the natural choice.

“It allows us to print higher quality and on gloss stocks,” says managing director Helen Kennett. “We will be able to take litho work and there will be work we can take from the

HP Indigos.” It will allow the company to produce a book throughout its lifecycle: short run digital to begin with, switching to litho for the launch and peak of sales, dropping to digital for the long tail of its life in print. “And the readers will not notice any difference,” she says.

“Although we have a strong relationship with Canon, we looked very hard at another manufacturer. We have no ques-tions about the service that we get from Canon with good service levels, so we knew we could get any better than canon for service,” she says.

Now the ProStream 1000, complete with Hunkeler unwind and rewind units is in

operation. The ColorStream remains in place, continuing to produce existing work. The new press will extend “our excel-lent service to the trade book market. We have confirmed our commitment to this new market by hiring a new sales profes-

sional who brings a wealth of experience to best serve these publishers”.

The company runs a Kolbus KM200, the perfect binder for short run production with a Tecnau Libra print on demand system, working from reels. “We have no need for immedi-ate investment in finishing,” she says.

Nor will the ProStream completely replace litho. The company has a five-colour LED Heidelberg Speedmaster and an eight-unit SM102P. Through-put lockdown the company has continued working at double shift patterns, with loadings of runs with an average of 15,000 copies produced on its litho presses.

Canon’s first UK Prostream 1000 is now at Henry Ling in Dorchester.

Scodix shakes up portfolioSCODIX HAS ANNOUNCED a line up of six new digital enhancement presses, each tailored to a specific slice of the market.

Two are for web to print applications, two for commer-cial and trade finishers, and two for carton printers. As a result the Ultra 101 and Ultra 202 are being phased out though the B1 E106 remains.

The Ultra 1000 and Ultra 2000 are for the commercial print sector, in-house or trade finishing. The Ultra 1000 is the entry level version with fewer applications on the one platform than come with the Ultra 2000. It has the ability to switch poly-mers without having to strip down the press. It will therefore appeal more to trade printers says Scodix.

Scodix has previously strug-gled with the trade sector because its registration system

was based on marks that had to be printed on the sheet. Now a camera system will register to the image, helping registration of digital print where the image may move slightly.

The Scodix Ultra 3000 and Ultra 4000 are intended for the online market, the 3000 for online commercial print and the 4000 for the web to pack sector. Scodix has enjoyed its greatest success in the photo products sector, the market for the Ultra 3000.

The Ultra 4000 is the model for carton with the ability to load pallets at either end and able to accept larger formats.

The Ultra 5000 and Ultra 6000 are aimed squarely at carton converters and include feeding and delivery to pallets. They can work with thicker substrates, up to 2mm thick. The Ultra 6000 is the larger format model (760x1060mm), but is restricted in the appli-cations it includes while the Ultra 5000 has the full selection

of polymers for varnish and textured effects and for foils. The company has also been working on polymers that would suit food packaging, but is not specific about these at this point.

Bakergoodchild kicks off investments with Send dealB A K E R G O O D C H I L D has acquired Send DM, the first stage in an investment programme that will increase capacity at its main Birmingham site in the coming weeks.

The purchase of the smaller print and mailing house will give Bakergoodchild a second location to act as a disaster recovery site should that be needed. But there is more to the deal than ensuring business continuity for customers of both organisations.

Managing director Paul Brough, who joined Baker-

goodchild in August last year with a remit to expand the busi-ness, says: “While Send DM is focused on shorter runs than Bakergoodchild, they are able to offer longer runs as well.

“Their staff are very expe-rienced with strong customer relationships. They will continue as Send DM, will remain on the Walsall site and they can build on the range of products and services that we offer rather than just selling direct mailing to customers.”

VPK expands corrugated footprintV P K h a s b o u g h t three Encase corrugated board plants to give it six operations in the UK, sales of £200 million and to become the largest corru-gated board converter without its own board making opera-tions in the country, handling 300,000 tonnes of container board a year. …

S T I T C H F A S T E RB I N D B E T T E RF O L D S H A R P E RC U T Q U I C K E RL A M I N A T E F I N E RF O I L B R I G H T E RF I N I S H S T R O N G E R

Intelligent Finishing Systems, Unit C, ATA House,Boundary Way, Hemel Hempstead, Herts HP2 7SS

T: 020 8991 6624 www.ifsl.uk.com

FINISHINGSTARTSHERE



Henosis says print can make masks saferA NEW UK COMPANY has developed a way to print on disposable face masks and is following that with a disposable mask made from a compostable material that can be printed.

Henosis is the Leeds company behind the development and Mark Bennett, whose CV includes Watmoughs, GD Print and York Mailing, is its co founder. The target is not targeted at the medical profes-sion. Henosis is aiming at the mass market of consumers and brands who want to send a message via a face covering.

“During the first lockdown, I was wondering what was needed to start opening up the economy,” says Bennett. And led to the idea of a disposable single-use face mask that could be branded or marked to show when it should be used. Dispos-able masks printed with a slogan, brand logo, barcode, could be part of the solution if produced cheaply enough.

For six months Bennett and co founder and sales director Brian Hammond pulled together

support from the government, aided by Close Asset Finance, and a host of contacts that Bennett had built up over 30 years in print. “I was interested to see if we could print on the mask materials. It took a lot of testing for the normal mask material and now a sustainable material that is compostable.”

The solution, now in place in a Leeds factory is using aqueous inkjet technology to print on the material. “We looked at compa-nies from China, the US, UK and Italy,” says Bennett. “The material is really difficult to print on and it’s a difficult process to control, but we are really pleased with the results.”

The material for the masks has been sourced from a Scot-tish mill and will be printed on the reel before being converted into masks. The original plan had been to outsource this aspect of production, but on investiga-tion Bennett says that many of the mask producing companies that had sprung up in the UK in recent months were entirely unsuitable. “I wouldn’t touch

them with a barge pole,” he says.Now Henosis is capable of

producing its own masks in an end to to end production process where Bennett has drawn on his years of experience as opera-tions director of GD Print as well as at other web offset operations around Yorkshire. “Printers are good at getting machines running,” he says. “These lines are simpler than operating a saddle stitcher or a Lithoman at speed. We have tried to make production as ‘printy’ as possible.

“We are talking to supermar-kets about a branded version that they can sell, with a slogan declaring that for each pack sold a donation will be made to the NHS, or the supermarket might give them away to customers coming into the store which they would continue wearing for the remainder of the day embla-zoned with a logo.”

Suitably printed masks might become part of a ticket to sport-ing event, the fixture printed on a mask to be worn to gain access to the ground on that particular

day, or to a play or concert with the name of that event printed clearly on it, Bennett explains.

The company can also provide a scanner that measures the temperature of the wearer and can scan a barcode on the mask to ensure that the correct mask is being torn for that day. This, Bennett believes, will have huge appeal in the schools and univer-sity market in creating Covid safe ways of allowing students access to buildings and facilities.

There are strong prospects for this kind of solution in the US where precautions need to be greater than in the less litigious UK and European culture.

The next step is to introduce the fully compostable version, due for a January launch which will break down in composting conditions in a few weeks.

And if that takes off in turn, production might need to be stepped up regardless of whether vaccination is rolled out. That will take time, and even then for most of the popu-lation, mask wearing has already become second nature.

Komori plans to advance AdvanceKOMORI WILL EXTEND the technology for automation that has been rolled out on the G Advance and GX Advance presses that should have been the focus to the company’s pres-ence at Drupa.

There are three aspects to the automation of this press: faster set up and accuracy for feeding and delivery; stabil-ity at high speed printing and minimal tasks for operators. The press is linked to Komori’s Connected Automation concept which downloads press and job

information from the cloud and can switch from job to job automatically.

During an open house in Japan, the B1 press was demon-strated with a fully automated changeover, including selecting a different type and format of paper and running at 18,000sph. Job data is used to preset the press, with fewer touch points

for the operator, a new respon-sive dampening system and quick feedback loop.

The company says that the Advance models are “easy to operate and boast superior productivity and higher printing quality” calling it “a significant improvement in ROI” so that the technology “is expected to become an integral part of printing business operations in the future generation”.

These words come with the publication of interim results for the financial year ending in March 2021. The company expects the pandemic to continue at least until the end of the financial year.

It is anticipating ¥71 billion (£506.9 million) revenue for the year with a ¥2.6 billion (£18.5 million) operating loss.

Three unite under one bannerNINE MONTHS AFTER Streamline Press completed the acquisition of Spectrum Print to join the earlier takeover of Baxters, it has completed the integration and the three sepa-rate companies are now the SBS Print Group, one of the largest in the Leicester area.

There is one customer contact, one prepress work-

Komori plans to introduce its Advance technology to formats beyond B1.

…



Pureprint invests to broaden offeringPUREPRINT HAS acquired photo and production studio Smudge, an operation that deliv-ers images for both print and for e-commerce applications.

The Wakefield business will answer to Imprint, Pureprint’s large format display graphics arm that deals with the same retail focused customer base. The Gateshead arm of Pure-print has also worked previously with Smudge whose clients include Jaeger, jewellery chain Goldsmiths and interiors busi-ness Ponden Home.

The deal continues Pure-print’s evolution into a marketing services business with e-commerce design adding to data management and marketing technologies as well as print.

CEO Mark Handford says: “As our clients’ needs have changed, we continue to align our investments to ensure we always deliver against their requirements. The acquisition of Smudge is another step in our

evolving history that ensures we still stay relevant in today’s market.”

Pureprint has previously built websites and presentations for clients that do not end up in print or that are related to print, Handford says. “And we have a big team of developers who produce bespoke software not always for print,” he says.

“We will look to grow Smudge quite quickly. We already have two opportunities to open up in London and the south west for our retail client base.

“We have a diverse and broad range of clients and growing markets who will benefit from the services that Smudge brings

to the group. By contributing to the creation of assets and managing the workflow through our marketing technology plat-forms, we can execute consistent campaigns across multiple channels.”

Pureprint already has its own direct to consumer online print business, YouLoveToPrint.co.uk. This offers standard print fare, leaflets, brochures and posters, for example.

“This has grown during the pandemic,” says Hand-ford. “Everything that we can do online has grown. We are also having a lot of conversa-tions about this with clients, who reckon they have brought plans forward five years. And our business model may have to change over the next few years, though I’m confident that ink on paper will remain the backbone of our business.”

That backbone has grown stronger with installation of the UK’s first HP Indigo 100K, capable of 6,000 B2 sheets an

hour, in EPM. “It is running a lot quicker than we expected,” he says.

As the press has the maximum throughput of 6,000sph (in EPM mode) it will be exceed-ingly useful as demand for photobooks, greetings cards and photo products increases in the run up to Christmas. The company has added print for Mixtiles, an Israeli start up that combines photo printing with a backing that sticks to a wall and can be moved at will.

The new machine replaces what was originally an Indigo 10000 when installed seven years ago, which had been upgraded to 12000 level. When that first arrived it changed the balance and breakeven points between offset and litho. The new press promises to do the same.

“This is a game changer,” says Handford. “It pushes the changeover point to litho much higher. This offers the right quality, is consistent and will deliver more.”

Pureprint CEO Mark Handford.

flow, one joined up way of communication, says group managing director Mark Lockley.

There are, however, three separate factories with a retained customer base that can be offered the increased range of services.

“It’s a far more joined up, compelling offering. SBS Print Group can confidently support businesses with every aspect of their print needs, from state of the art technology to innova-tive solutions that fit even the most challenging timescales and budgets,” he says.

“The current climate means businesses need to be confident placing their print with a reli-able partner who can be trusted

to deliver and we believe our new, unified approach places us in the best possible position to deliver this and continue to grow our business.”

The reorganisation will make the three companies more effec-tive. Less work will need to leave any part of the business, and through reduction of the duplication of tasks, there will be efficiency gains.

Paragon returns to M&A actionPARAGON HAS STEPPED back into acquisition mode, buying creative large format digital printer Tod UK. The central London print business

will become part of Paragon’s Service Graphics Print & Design operation and its operation in the Farringdon Road becomes a creative services centre of excellence.

Arden Dies readies move to 3D printARDEN DIES IS participat-ing in a 12-week upskilling programme designed to intro-duce concepts and advantages of additive manufacturing technologies. The programme organised by Made Smarter North West is run in conjunction with PrintCity at Manchester Metropolitan University and Fabricon Design.

“For us it’s about upskill-ing the workforce to look for opportunities to increase productivity through new technology, meaning custom-ers will get a better product,” says Sarah Poynter, operations manager of the Stockport company.

Arden Dies will be looking for ways it can use 3D printing as part of the die manufacturing process, potentially to replace some of the routing processes that have been required, she says.

“We are not 100% sure yet where we will be able to use the technology, but we have some ideas. It is something that is really important for us at the moment.”

…

…

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Plates market shake up as demand plungesA BIG SHAKE UP IN THE printing plate market is on its way as the three major producers each report declining volumes and margins under pressure.

Agfa has already announced the closure of plate production at Leeds and in France, but the company warns that this is not enough. In the company’s Q3 results, Agfa reports that sales in its offset plates division have fallen 17.3% this year. While much of this can be attributed to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a belief that pre-Covid volumes will not return. These actions are intended to align printing plate production capacity to the evolu-tion of the offset industry, it says.

The company reported sales of €168 million for the quarter, down from €212 million, so it remains a substantial business for Agfa. The nub however, is that it is not a profitable one.

“To improve profitability and to address the significant decline in market demand, Agfa is reviewing its offset business model, simplifying its organi-sation and streamlining its product offering. The company also estimates that the current pricing levels in the market are not sustainable. It is looking into way to adapt the earning model for certain services it provides to its customers,” it says.

Agfa though is not alone in making changes. Fujifilm has

noted that decreased demand for products in its graphic systems division, covering plates and inkjet has been felt in the first half of its financial year, with a drop of 24.8% in revenues in graphic systems and 20.5% in inkjet compared to an 11.9% decline across the group’s activities.

Demand for printing plates has fallen as a result of Covid says Fujifilm, but looking forward it is not expecting a full recovery. “Henceforth,

we intend to promote sales of processless CTP plates and other environmentally friendly products,” it says.

Kodak does not report the impact across all its plates, confining commentary to the process free Sonora range. After a precipitous drop in Q2, volumes of Sonora are down 8% year on year. Annuity revenues for Prosper are down by 10% over the year to date with thanks to increased sales of print heads, revenues are up 3%.

The emphasis in the quarter is about strengthening the balance sheet, with another $100 million wiped from the debt total even with a $63 million decline in revenue for the quarter compared to a year earlier. This was a little better than in the second quarter, though it resulted in a $4 million Ebitda loss, a $12 million adverse swing from Q3 last year.

Global demand for printing plates is down sharply and not expected to bounce back fully once the pandemic ends. As a result producers are taking action to return to profitabiity.

Prestige powers up finishingPRESTIGE PRINT HAS taken delivery of a Xerox mono press and Morgana PowerSquare 224 booklet maker to cope with expanding demand and to make the 33-year-old business more efficient.

Hitesh Dhulashia runs the Telford business with his two brothers. “The investments will help us with production,” he says.

“We needed to invest in square back to cope with prod-ucts that can be up to 200pp. We have two Horizon booklet makers but these are limited to 80pp and we need to do some catalogues and manuals to 260pp.”

The PowerSquare will deliver up to 224pp on 80gsm papers, with two stitches and a formed squared spine which enables the product to be opened flat and achieves a stable stack when piled up.

At the same time the busi-ness has invested in a Xerox PrimeLink B9100 to boost capacity for mono pages from customers in a 25-mile radius around Telford covering commercial print, catalogues and manuals. This can print 136ppm

“We have never been shy to invest,” says Dhulashia. “It’s been about keeping our heads down and working hard. We are only 13 or 14 working a single shift and putting in nine- and ten-hour days when neces-sary. We have always wanted to provide a good service.”

Ricoh accelerates its own changesTHE PANDEMIC IS provok-ing Ricoh into accelerating a corporate restructure that was planned for two years time. The new company structure will be in place in April next year, in time for the new financial year and two years ahead of the orig-inal schedule.

From that date the corpo-rate headquarters will oversee five autonomous business units: Digital Service, Digital Products, Graphic Communi-cations, Industrial Solutions and Futures. The latter will focus on products for ‘solving major social issues’. Sustainability is already a core part of Ricoh’s culture and it has previously

spoken of the sustainability benefits of switching textile printing from wasteful and polluting processes that domi-nate today to print on demand using inkjet.

Digital Services and Digital Products will focus on products for the office and improving communications and workflows, especially in light of the adop-tion of remote working.

Revenues from commercial printing in the first six months were down ¥8.7 billion, 22% lower than in 2019. “There is little customer appetite for invest-ing in hardware,” the company says. Nevertheless it points to good activity around the new Pro C5300 and the Pro V70000 continuous feed inkjet press.

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Tsunami of redundancies is buildingTHE UK ECONOMY grew more than 15% in Q3 according to official government statis-tics, recouping some if not all of the revenue lost due to the pandemic in Q2.

Likewise the printing industry staged some kind of recovery in Q3 according to the latest Printing Outlook report from the BPIF. However, any momentum that printers were building up, has been brought to a juddering halt by regional and national lockdowns.

Now almost half of those surveyed say they plan to make redundancies, that any recov-ery is likely to be stuttering and demand will remain weak, forcing printers to respond by cutting staff levels. Some have already done so and the survey, taken before the Chancellor announced an extension of the job retention scheme into the new year, predicts that there could be 5,000 redundancies by the end of this year. The

government’s action may have shifted the impact by a couple of months.

Work from home continues with 48% planning to enable staff to work from home, where possible, for at least one day a week as the crisis eases.

According to the BPIF. Thirty-five percent of print-ers managed to increase output in Q3, some 22% held output steady, with 43% experiencing a further downturn. This left a

balance of -8, compared to the +7 anticipated as the quarter began, even if it was massive leap forward from the -59 recorded three months ago.

Unsurprisingly the continu-ing effects of the lockdowns and government action to tackle the pandemic are the top concern for printers, with Brexit returning to prominence as the second key concern. Aggressive pricing by competitors remains a continuing concern.

There is widespread disap-pointment that while there is help for the hospitality sector needed as a result of the latest round of lockdowns, the help is not extended to the wider supply chain – including print.

This has dented orders in the run up to Christmas, tradition-ally the period when printers can pocket a profit. Expectations are that more will suffer a reduction in work than will experience an increase in volumes, making Q4 the fourth consecutive quarter of reducing volumes.

The greatest impact seems to have been felt by high street printers in the centre of almost silent business districts as office workers remain at home or on furlough. Likewise inplant print rooms have suffered the steepest declines in activity. But concern is universal, indi-cated by the numbers wanting to share their experience, with record numbers participating in the report.

The UK’s printers anticipate being forced to make redundancies in response to plunging order books and in a bid to balance the books.

large format printers as well as production printing systems, generally described as “high volume, high quality printing equipment and solutions”.

Boss shifts to latest IndigoBOSS PRINT HAS upgraded to an HP Indigo 7900 “with all the bells and whistles”, says manag-ing director Fenton Smith.

The machine replaces a 12-year-old Indigo 5500 and fulfils a wish formed when Smith saw the Indigo 7900 when launched at Drupa 2016. “I was not in a situation then where I could invest,” he says. That has changed, and despite some hesi-tation at the start of lockdown, Boss Print has pressed ahead.

“It prints a lot faster and the quality is significantly better. This has been specified with all the bells and whistles that are possible including being able to print white and silver. It means we can experiment and play to find out what we can do with it,” says Smith.

The Acton printer aims at the top end of the market, printing with its own extended gamut system to increase the impact of litho printing and to open up the luxury books market. It also keeps a difference between the analogue and digital processes.

Even so, the company is able to transfer more mundane work from the Speedmaster to the Indigo, where the digital press has an efficiency gain when using more expensive papers,

“which gives us more capacity on the litho press to focus on the luxury books market, where we can offer rapid make ready when printing multisections once set up.

“We are now going to start doing a promotional campaign around the impact of print.”

What a picture for IndigoHP HAS LANDED ITS biggest ever order for Indigo presses and as a result will supply Shutterfly with more than 60 machines across the 100K for productivity and the 12000HD for versatility with the full range of value added options. The presses will be installed at four sites in the US.

Duplo demos digital driveDUPLO INTERNATIONAL has worked with Ultimate to build a prepress to finishing workflow around the power of Ultimate’s Impostrip Pro workflow.

The collaboration was demonstrated at a virtual open house where it was argued that the workflow can save a smaller printer £29,000 a year by minimising errors, reducing mistakes and improving produc-tivity through automated set up.

“Our software enables digital printers to get the most auto-mation out of their investment, to handle short run and print demand jobs cost effectively and quickly,” says product specialist manager Andy Cuff. n

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COVER STORY CARTONS

CARTONS CARTONS OPEN UP FOR OPEN UP FOR COMMERCIAL COMMERCIAL PRINTERSPRINTERSTHE PACKAGING MARKET IS EXPANDING WHILE COMMERCIAL PRINT HAS STALLED AT BEST, LEADING SOME COMMERCIAL PRINTERS TO CONSIDER TRANSITION TO CARTON PRINTING.

The big groups can install specialist presses like this 18-unit Speedmaster, leaving opportunity for other printers.

� www.printbusiness.co.uk November/December 2020� 23

CARTONS COVER STORY

PACKAGING IS WHERE THE GROWTH is, says Lee Coulson, director of InPrint Colour, a Yorkshire sheetfed print business that is investing to grasp this opportunity. It is far from alone. Across the printing indus-try the appeal of packaging is stronger than the appeal of commercial printing where demand seems to be in never ending steady decline.

By contrast packaging appears to be booming, from pharmaceuticals to healthcare, breakfast cereals to sausages, personalised gifts to kitchen table produc-ers, there are more and more customers looking for answers to carton conundrums. Add in the rise in e-commerce, the drive to shorter runs and rebranding of products, the unwillingness to engage with extended supply chains and elimination of waste, the need to eliminate plastic and the carton market is starting to take on some of the characteristics of commercial printing.

MOST OF THE LONG STANDING carton printers have enjoyed large order volumes and contracts which specify order frequency, but must deliver consistency among dozens of other details that the printer must be responsible for. It is just one of the barriers that have dissuading many from entering the sector.

As a result this is also one of the barri-ers that has perhaps protected converters from any great need to change. Traditional converters still find small numbers awkward to cope with, leaving space for more nimble suppliers.

There is only limited penetration of digital printing in the carton world, though

this may be one of the changes that is getting underway. E-commerce means that shelf impact is giving way to unboxing impact and the wow impact of opening a packag-ing in front of a video camera. And, as in commercial print, fast turnaround is becom-ing essential.

INPRINT COLOUR RECKONS THAT most of its customers for commercial print can also become customers for packaging. This transition began with installation of a four-colour Speedmaster CX75, replacing a ten-colour SM52. The B2 press can feed and print carton board and while only a four-colour press without UV, this is capable of producing the sorts of work the company needs.

It has now added a Diana Go folder gluer line to finish carton blanks that are still die cut by trade finishers. Heidelberg which has been the printer’s preferred supplier for more than 30 years, can supply the Easy-matrix die cutting platen, which takes a B1 sheet. The options for B2 die cutting and creasing range from the smaller of High-con’s Euclid machines for very short runs, the traditional Heidelberg Cylinder adapted for this task or the Kama ProCut machines.

THE NEWEST ADDITION TO THE Kama range is aimed squarely this market, intended as a far more productive replace-ment for the Cylinder. This is the ComCut 76, a machine that will handle 3,000 sheets an hour, that is three times as fast as a Cylin-der, and it is far more user friendly than the veteran machine. For one thing it has a pallet feed so there is no need for an opera-

tor to lift sheets to load into the die cutter. Any commercial print company planning to process a volume of cartons will need to bear this in mind.

And there are an increasing number of printers considering the move, says John Harrison, finishing specialist for Friedheim International. Friedheim handles Kama in the UK along with responsibility for other packaging focused equipment, including the Koenig & Bauer Duran folder gluer. “There has certainly been a trend towards commer-cial printers producing cartons alongside commercial work in recent years,” he says.

“AND EVEN IN THE CURRENT situa-tion, there has been an increase in inquiries, including for a more productive die cutter and folder gluer from companies using something like a Moll or Petratto where applications are limited.

“Run lengths for cartons are getting shorter, which makes it more difficult for larger companies to handle because they have geared up for long runs.”

The importance of a carton as a sales and marketing tool is also increasing, requiring different styles of design to differentiate the product, which again favous the agile producer rather than the highly automated supplier where standardisation of product type leads to efficiency and lowers unit cost. Unit cost has been absolutely key for brands and retailers buying cartons.

In turn this means that the B1 press is supreme. The format creep from 102 to 104, 105 to 106 wide sheets can help accom-modate an extra few carton blanks. B2 suits pharmaceutical boxes where formats

Kama ProCut 76 Foil at Epic in Dorchester has helped the company

expand into short run packaging.

…


COVER STORY CARTONS

and print runs are smaller. Large format presses are still preferred for longer runs and for larger boxes, cartons for drinks packaging for example. Heidelberg has stepped back from offering large format presses arguing that demand has not been high enough and that it was losing money. It was losing money too on its Primefire B1 inkjet press which had been aimed at carton printers.

FOR HARRISON THE KEY TO success in the carton market lies in the finishing area: the press will be capable of printing boards, but someone used to working a saddle stitcher or folder will need training to cope with a platen or folder gluer. Commercial printers will need to be aware that while a platen is relatively compact, a folder gluer is not. And that by its nature board is thicker than 115gsm paper, so more pallet space for work in progress will be needed.

“Folding and gluing can be a bit problem-atic for commercial printers,” he explains. “Expertise is needed to run a folder gluer and to handle the different styles of cartons, some of them new to the market.

“WE CAN HELP WITH TRAINING AND support on the Duran folder gluer which seems to be the go-to piece of equipment for commercial printers. It is designed to be easily serviced with components that can be easily accessed anywhere in the world.” It is also priced to appeal to this market, just as Heidelberg has positioned the Diana Go for the commercial printer evolving into carton production.

Harrison points out that complex-ity increases the unit value of a carton, so improving the margin that can be achieved with each step up in complexity from a simple straight line carton to four- and six-corner styles.

THIS TIES IN WITH THE GROWING requirement for shorter production runs and greater on shelf impact. “We can find that training may take longer than the installa-tion of the machines,” says Harrison. “We make sure that we can offer the complete package and to make sure that the operators are comfortable with the machinery.

“The Duran is robust enough to cope with day to day operation; it needs to be operator friendly and to be fast at makeready to go from one job to the next as quickly as possible.”

Friedheim will be able to access pre-owned machines for companies wanting to keep the costs of investment down, and which do not want to invest in Chinese

equipment, which may not come with the level of support a printer might expect. “We find that commercial printers are not always sure what they want, so we adopt a consul-tancy approach and have machines that are fully rebuilt in the factory,” he adds.

Graphic West specialises in this style of consultancy approach being able to configure and supply a complete finishing operation. It has been involved in creating lines for digital printing where automation, validation and robustness are essential, including the soft-ware needed to track what is produced and control the line.

THIS ARM OF THE COMPANY has now been acquired by CCL Labels which has ambitious plans for digital printing of cartons for the pharmaceutical sector.

It also supplies the likes of Alexir with specialist machinery while rebuilding and marketing preowned lines from the leading manufacturers.

“There are so many aspects to consider,” says managing director Geoff Carter. He points to rapidly expanding areas where demand is growing: tissue boxes up 25-30% even before Covid; convenience food rising 40% in the last two years and the rapid shift from plastic packaging to board.

THE SHIFT TO SHORTER RUNS opens the way to non traditional suppliers and technologies which have been focused on long runs to achieve consistency box to box. With e-commerce there is a need for more bespoke packaging, 50 to 5,000 units. “That’s the opportunity for digital packag-ing,” says Carter.

Graphic West developed and patented the software to handle small batch production with the ability to track every carton. This was sold as part of the deal with CCL. It indicates that software is key to the shorter runs as much as the equipment. “We would ask how many cartons a company proposed

Recycling bins show how packaging print has replaced newspapers, magazines and catalogues.

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CARTONS COVER STORY

to produce in a month,” he says. “Whether these are split across many or few jobs, whether the equipment will be needed to operate every day, or just a few days, on multiple shifts or just occasionally.”

In the first instance Carter suggests that a commercial printer would be better to use a trade finisher until volumes build up “It makes no sense to run a gluing line just one day week,” he says. This is the path taken by InPrint Colour.

IF FINISHING IS AN ISSUE THAT commercial printers need to consider, the press issues are more straightforward. A change to UV printing may be essential. While it is possible to run a press with conventional oxidising inks for carton print-ing, the preference in the UK at least, is for UV curing. UK carton converters were quick to see the advantages of UV, both for printing and for inline varnishing during the 1980s and have not looked back. With UV the ink is cured on the surface of the board, so remains bright and is not lost through absorption. A UV varnish will enhance the finish of the print and add a measure of protection against scuffing and marking as the pack is filled, transported to the store and placed on a shelf.

CONVERTING A PRESS TO RUN WITH UV inks will open up a greater range of markets, including food packaging provid-ing food safety regulations are met. A drawback to the use of UV is that that there can be migration of some of the molecules from the outer surface of the board through to the inner surface where it might affect the taste and smell of the food. Low taint inks and food safe products that meet the requirements of the Swiss Ordinance or Nestlé are necessary.

Any ink supplier should be able to advise. Modern inks and varnishes will need careful handling, though not the same extent as the highly volatile first generation of UV prod-ucts which could cause problems if splashed on the skin. There is no need to fear the consumables.

HOWEVER, ROLLERS AND blankets will need to be suitable for printing with UV and the cleaning solvents also need to be sympathetic for the materials. Hybrid prod-ucts may also suit a commercial printer that wants to switch from running conventional inks to running UV.

Converting the press to run with UV products is straightforward. Press manufac-turers have long built machines as standard with the ability to accommodate UV lamps.

There are a number of companies that can offer these conversions. Among them is Benford UV which has enjoyed great success across North America converting sheetfed presses from all suppliers and all formats to operate with UV lamps, either mercury vapour tubes or LED UV arrays.

WHILE LED IS RECKONED TO BE the future in all sectors, this technology is not yet ready for prime time in carton printing. Mercury vapour lamps deliver a wide spread of UV wave lengths, allowing ink developers a greater choice of photo initiators, and are able to meet requirements for both deep and surface cure at full press speeds.

Managing director Marc Benford is clear: “You need to use UV for packaging work. Fortunately the days when you needed a UV prepared press have gone and today most presses are pretty easy to convert.”

A CONFIGURATION WILL INCLUDE multiple lamps in the delivery and will probably involve one or more inter deck UV lamps. This will allow a printer to print a white and then cure and overprint to work with non standard boards, including plastics. A recent project in the US includes three end of press lamps and two inter decks on an eight-colour plus coater KBA Rapida 162.

“The XL generation of Heidelbergs,

whether an XL105 or XL106 and XL75 are easy to do, likewise an SM102 and CD74, but the CD102 is a little more difficult because the inter deck lamp needs s special design,” he says. The conversion will normally take place over a weekend.

As well as the lamps in the delivery, Boden would recommend a lamp between the first and second print unit to enable white to be printed, and an inter deck ahead of the coating unit. “That would cover pretty much anything,” he says.

BENFORD WILL ALSO SUPPLY what it calls Eco UV, its equivalent of Komori’s H-UV using a tuned mercury vapour lamp, and LED UV. The advantage of the latter technology is that installation is simpler, if only because there is no need to fit an extraction hood in the press delivery. This is needed because UV curing on a conven-tional system creates ozone which is classed as a volatile organic compound which needs ducting away from the press to the outside of the factory where it quickly breaks down.

THE NATURE OF THE COOL running LED technology does not create ozone, though suitable consumables remain relatively expensive. “A printer with an unencumbered B1 press could do worse things than convert it to run UV for pack- …

Digital print for cartons is possible but is not yet mainstream.


COVER STORY CARTONS

WITH NO LIMITSFINISHESMOST ADVANCED TRADITIONAL UV DESIGN ON THE MARKET

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aging. And currently we are receiving regular inquiries about doing just this from printers that want to diversify the products they can produce.”

Many printers are already producing cartons Matt Rockley at Heidelberg UK, says that reports from the presses in the areas covered by Heidelberg UK, the Nordics, Ireland and South Africa, as well as the UK itself, show that more and more of them are printing on board thickness materials. The information does not included what is being printed, “but does show a definite trend towards printing thicker materials” he says.

THESE ARE BEING RUN ON conven-tional presses. UV is only needed for food packaging, for most other non food applica-tions standard inks and coatings are enough, certainly enough for commercial printers to dip a toe into the carton market, he argues.

There is a definite uptick in boxes needed for e-commerce and to create a better experience for consumers than bundling products that have been bought online into plastic bags. The lockdown period has given an extra impulse to this, aided by the ability

Many printers will have a Heidelberg Cylinder used for cutting and creasing.

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CARTONS COVER STORY

WITH NO LIMITSFINISHESMOST ADVANCED TRADITIONAL UV DESIGN ON THE MARKET

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to buy simple cartons in low quantities through online print sites.

Saxoprint was one of the first to offer cartons online with Pixart Printing and more recently Onlineprinters also adding cartons to the range. There has been resistance to only purchasing previously as the number of carton styles offered in this way is limited.

BUT FOR START UP COMPANIES that are new to the concept of buying cartons the convenience outweighs these limitations. Such developments underline the increasing appeal of printing packaging.

Heidelberg has noted this. Rockley says: “Every three demonstrations that we put on will include questions about finishing for carton printing. Printers want to be able to diversify and there is a definite increase in short run packaging.”

Heidelberg’s presses can cope with the standard boards that are needed with even the CS92 handing 0.6mm boards which can be extended to 0.8mm thickness. CD and XL presses can handle 1mm materials, and even perfecting presses are running with board weight substrates.

The ideal configuration would be five colours plus coater, though many commer-cial printers, InPrint Colour included, are printing with a four-colour press. The major packaging groups will specify increas-ingly sophisticated presses, up to 18 units to cope with special colours, inline cold foiling and with multiple coaters to meet require-ments for high volumes of luxury packaging needed by cosmetics and drinks customers.

The short run trend is starting to have an impact on these customers, something noticed by both Heidelberg and Koenig & Bauer.

THEIR LATEST GENERATION OF presses, like those from Komori, include automated makeready processes, wash up processes that can clean a unit by disengag-ing it from the main press drive and while the press continues to run. Makeready becomes a matter of minutes.

“Carton printers are starting to run their machines with the sorts of numbers that commercial printers are used to,” says Rockley. This does not limit the opportunity for a commercial printer. Their experience

in working with fast turnaround shorter runs converts to carton printing at a time when customers understand the cashflow benefits of replacing large volumes in a single order to frequent replenishment of stock and to take advantage of marketing messages and to reduce the amount of waste that follows a change in ingredients, contact addresses or legislation.

SHORT RUNS ALSO HELP the commer-cial printer. A specialist packaging printer will mount a press on a plinth to increase the pile heights at the feeder and delivery. Even 600 micron boards are multiple times thicker than 150gsm papers so it follows that pallets will need changing more frequently. With shorter runs, there is less of an advantage in having the press above ground level.

It is a line of thinking that InPrint Colour has examined. It can compete in the growing market for cartons. If more and more marketing material is shifting from print to digital, that shift is stimulating demand for printed boxes. And nobody has yet figure out how to replace a printed carton with a web page. n


CARTONS PROFILE GLOSSOP CARTONS

GLOSSOP GROWS UPGLOSSOP CARTONS HAS INTRODUCED OUTSIDE EXPERTISE TO HELP IT SHAPE UP AS AN INDEPENDENT CARTON BUSINESS ABLE TO SATISFY THE LATEST GENERATION OF CUSTOMERS AND POTENTIAL EMPLOYEES.

Standard operating procedures have been introduced on the folder gluers in collaboration with the crews running them. This way they set the targets for productivity.


GLOSSOP CARTONS CARTONS PROFILE

SIMON BODEN HAS PUT AWAY HIS passport – and not only because the Covid-19 pandemic has made international travel incredibly difficult. Until last year Boden was a much travelled executive in the pack-aging industry, working latterly for pan European group Meyer Melnhof in Valen-cia. He is now based in the north west and this year has been working for Glossop Cartons, one the country’s family owned packaging printers that is on something of an expansion drive.

Boden’s task is to tighten up the opera-tions side of the business, injecting a little of the big group mentality and professionalism to the culture of the independent company, as business improvement manager.

“All my family had left home to see the world,” says Boden. “I came back to the UK and the opportunity came up to join Glossop.”

Jackie Sidebottom-Every is sales director and, along with husband Brian, has been running the business since 1982. In those days it was a typical hand to mouth opera-tion, the working hours extending beyond the factory to the dining table. The first month’s revenue came to £282, she remem-bers. The company has grown organically, adding larger litho presses, finishing, digital printing and CAD design along the way. More recently it has moved to a new factory in Stockport, around 20 minutes from the Glossop plant which is now closing.

THE NEW PLANT HAS TWO RMGT B1 carton presses, four folder gluers, three standard platens and a Highcon Euclid digital cutting device. This had been paired with a Xeikon press for digital carton print-ing. The Euclid remains, but the Xeikon has gone. In short, Glossop has been a success, without the benefit of outside help. It did not need to recruit Boden or someone like him, but it did so. “It’s about changing the mindset here,” she says.

The change has been underway, with investment in an Imprint MIS to replace the legacy system, as a key step. The old system relied on filling in paper worksheets and entering information into an Excel spreadsheet.

THE MIS HAS BEEN COLLECTING production data since May 2019, providing accessible data about how long a job took and how much waste was created. After six months, this was expanded to the shopfloor with data gathered in real time, a crucial step.

Boden explains: “You need accurate and complete data to set realistic goals about

what speed equipment should run for any job type, and then using the data to show that a job should run at certain speed. This is challenging the status quo.

“THANKS TO THE MIS, WE CAN measure how long a task takes using real data, how box style and type affects this. We can compare the performance of differ-ent shifts and analyse the difference – is one crew measurably better, what impact does excess humidity have, and so on.”

Boden intends to use this data to drive up performance, creating standard operating procedures that will smooth out the differ-ences between crews, not by pushing down performance of the best, but by raising the standards of the lowest to level of the best.

“IT’S ABOUT WORKING SMARTER,” he says. “Communication is the key. We have started slowly, introducing Total Production Management concepts aimed at cutting makeready times.” It is already having an impact with an increase in running speeds, but “there’s a long way to go”, he says.

The improvement has come by working with the teams rather than imposing change upon them and goes beyond polishing the operating processes. One early gain has been a reduction in the stretch wrap used to protect boxes leaving the factory. “We are using 40% less plastic with an improvement in sustainability as well as a reduction in costs. It’s an improvement felt on the bottom line,” says Boden.

At Meyer Melnhof, production was biased towards major brands and long runs with a

similar style of work. The company had enough facilities to optimise production at each plant. Glossop is rather different. “The volume and variety of clients at Glossop is simply amazing for me. Some days a job with hundreds of cartons, some days print-ing millions of cereal boxes, and within the same company – that’s fantastic,” he says.

“OUR CUSTOMERS RANGE FROM the SMEs to multinationals and we sell to both,” says Sidebottom-Every. On the one hand there are cereal boxes produced in vast quantities, on the other hand there are very short runs of intricate cartons that are designed for maximum impact and to mark out the quality of a product. One uses stand-ard dies on the high speed platens, the other requires laser cutting and digital dies.

“We love the versatility of the Euclid. And some customers love the intricate deco-ration that is possible,” she explains. Not so the digital press. “Digital printing, however, has not taken off. It’s exciting and interest-ing, but it’s not for us,” she continues. Speed of makeready on the later litho press makes short runs feasible.

What is typical for the business are the deep relationships that have been forged over the years, some extending back more than 20 years and based on personal rela-tionships that do not always exist today, says Sidebottom-Every. Relationships with indi-viduals in multinational customers tend to be transitory as people move from post to post and where formal procurement struc-tures can get in the way.

THIS IS NOT THE CASE WITH smaller companies where customers have become friends and there is a strong partnership approach and dedication to getting the job out on time. Wherever possible, every customer, no matter how large or small, is treated the same, she says.

That applies too to decision making with the large packaging groups where there is a hierarchical structure and a committee system to navigate. Boden says: “Within an independent company decisions can be made a lot faster.” That was clear at Glossop where the latest litho press was delivered in the months after Drupa 2016, straight into the new factory, itself a decision taken quickly, from decision to moving in, in around six weeks.

That move enlarged the Glossop prem-ises to around 5,000m2. It has since added a further 2,300m2 unit and is in the process of erecting linking buildings between the three units on the site.

This is not a big is bad, small is good

Simon Boden has introduced the sorts of management techniques he employed at Meyr Melnhof, one of the largest packaging groups in Europe.

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CARTONS PROFILE GLOSSOP CARTONS

argument. Boden is bringing with him the proven management tools and attitudes that have ensured that Meyer Melnhof can compete alongside some of the North American groups. This involves manage-ment systems that culminate in 5S, six sigma, kanban and other techniques that mean, for a multi-site operation, that competence can be spread across multiple sites and that they can be compared with each other.

He is being careful not to impose these sorts of tools on the Glossop staff without careful preparation because such thinking is new. Any management reporting, like the written reports that Glossop used to use, has been developed organically.

The evolution will be a step by step process, beginning with benchmarking and the creation of standard operating procedures. “We were very good at bench-marking at Meyer Melnhof,” he says. Many companies, however, settle for performance levels that are comfortable without check-ing whether they are best in class or how they compare to their competition. “Some companies have never had their capabilities tested so there is no need to change,” he adds.

That is changing. Boden, working through the crews in each department, is pressure testing the systems and equipment they are in charge of. This means challeng-ing the accepted ways of doing things to see whether there might be a better way of running things.

So on a carton gluing line, for example, crews will run a style of carton as fast as possible, noting the steps taken in makeready, the way that pallets are brought to one end and the way that the finished product is taken off the line and packed. The times and steps are noted and the line runs as fast as possible. Any point of failure is noted and then in subsequent meetings exam-ined to discover whether improvements can be made. Perhaps the blanks could be presented in a more effective way, might a pallet lift reduce stress on the operators.

ANYTHING CAN BE CHALLENGED. This can apply to the makeready process and how the lines are set up, how work is delivered, where labels are applied to the packing boxes. And of course what can be done to avoid a breakdown occurring at the same point. And so on.

After several iterations the crew will be able to describe the optimum way of producing a certain carton type, a standard operating procedure that, if followed, will deliver the same result every time. And this is a way of working that has been agreed by the crew itself, in short there is buy in

and operators know what can be achieved because they have done it. It’s like training so that on match day every player knows what to do. Boden is the team coach.

“Total process management has a role across the plant,” he says. “It helps to iden-tify the potential bottlenecks that can affect efficiency. We start by focusing on one area to show that the approach works. Do that right and it becomes easier the next time. This is still a long way from a 5S system, however.”

IF THIS APPROACH WORKS IN A large company handling long runs, the potential is that much greater in a smaller company handling the full mix of run lengths and carton styles, where fractional improve-ments at makeready can have a large cumulative effect.

The MIS has crucial role to play, provid-ing the data and the numbers that underpin the analysis and to identify where the process slows and the reason for that – especially if different types of box and different custom-ers suffer from different bottleneck points. The solution can start with the artwork and design.

Glossop is able to offer product design, creating the box that a product might need, not the graphics that go on it. This is not an issue with established brands and packag-ing design agencies. It can be a problem for the artisan start up business. Some design-ers will need guiding away from extensive use of pastel colours on the packaging, for example.

Then there is understanding that consum-ables need to be consistent and these are now monitored as they come in. “We have

worked to make sure that consumables are ready and available when needed and are in the right amount,” says Boden. “We are not choosing purely on cost, service is also important.” All this is measured and calcu-lated through shopfloor data collection and the analysis offered by the Imprint MIS. We have already noticed the difference in terms of throughput and speed of production,” says Boden.

THAT IS INCREASING PRODUCTION capacity without any increase in costs. “The passion exists throughout the business. The decisions are made quickly. Streamlining production and the improvements in quality have been fantastic,” he continues. “For three years production had flatlined. That has changed.

“And if that change can be seen, it can be communicated. And we can get shop floor buy in, because no one knows it all. Here it is about the blend of outside experience and the culture that already exists.”

The change that is sweeping in is also about planning and building the next generation of managers. It has identified three managers who are being groomed to take on greater responsibility and who are being supported and given the opportunity to develop.

It is also on the look out for new recruits. Glossop prefers to take on trainees that are a little older than school leavers. The extra couple of years means that they are little more mature and committed than younger trainees.

“We look for a can do attitude because we can graft operational knowledge if there is a motivation and willingness to learn,” says Boden.

A PRESS ASSISTANT HAS MOVED across to become a manager on the carton gluing lines. Another is undergoing a similar development process. “He is not assigned to the manning list for equipment, but can shadow anyone on the line. Every two weeks I will sit down with him and discuss expe-riences and expectations. I’d like to think that within 12 months he will be one of our best operators. We need to develop our own staff.”

He will be one of the key participants as Glossop sharpens up, as it puts on the cloth-ing of some of the best run companies in the world. At the same time it will remain a family business. This is not about changing what the business is known for. It is about building on that reputation and creating the foundations to meet the needs of the next generation of customers and staff.

Jackie Sidebottom-Every says that every customer, however large or small, receives the same treatment.


BCA CARTONS PROFILE

PUTTING PUTTING THE KNIFE INTHE KNIFE INWHEN MARK COTTEE WENT TO the Packaging Innovations show in Birming-ham in February this year, he had no idea that Duplo could offer a small format digital cutting table. By the time he departed from the show, he had decided to buy the PFI Blade A3+ cutting table which Duplo had introduced at the show.

And at the end of September the device had been delivered to BCA, at the small business unit in Enfield that the micro busi-ness inhabits. Somehow the PFI Blade is tucked in to the room almost in touching distance of a Xerox Versant, Watkiss Spine-Master, Duplo booklet maker and Matrix laminator used for foiling. There are posters of pop bands on the wall, indicating one set of clients and shelves holding other samples and the paraphernalia needed to run a small print business.

Cottee pulls something that looks more like a sound bar than a cutting device from a shelf. It is a Cricut, he explains, available from Hobbycraft for £380. Inside there are two tools on a gantry that can cut and score on sheets of paper or board.

BCA, the company where he is manag-ing director, bought the crafter’s device for a particular job for one customer. This customer had wanted circles cut into heavy paper that would be laminated together back to back for a handful of presentation brochures. The conventional way, using a die designed for the job would have been prohibitively expensive, because so few products were needed.

BCA HAD TO FIND ANOTHER WAY. The Cricut, while painfully slow, was the answer. It went on to produce the print business’s snowflake Christmas cards, again at a snail’s pace. They were, however, very well received and generated interest, so that when Cottee was walking the aisles of the NEC, he knew the company could use an accurate cutting unit. “But I was not expect-ing to see anything,” he says.

Like the Cricut and the most industrial large format cutting tables, the PFI Blade uses tools in a cutting head moving across a gantry controlled by the digital file to trace a cutting path as dictated by the job

The�PFI�Blade�is�put�to�profitable�use�by�BCA�helping�the�micro�business�stand�out�above�its�rivals�by�offering�what�they�cannot.

file. Different tools can achieve different effects from cutting 1.3mm substrates to kiss cutting stickers from self adhesive materials, from creating intricate designs for invita-tions to cutting out carton samples for new products, producing arresting table stands or promotional gimmicks that invite users to engage and play with them.

When Cottee spotted the Blade, it was love at first sight. “This was something that our business needed to be using,” he says. And it has, producing its first money paying job within the first week of arrival. Since then Cottee’s colleague has been putting the Blade through its paces trying to understand how to get the best from the software and the tools, liaising in this mission with Duplo’s Andy Cuff at Addlestone, who has also been pushing the machine to its limits.

THE CORE OF THE MACHINE IS AN almost standard cutting platform, available to a number of OEMs, with a feeder to load printed sheets onto the belt which carries it into position. Duplo has written its own software and this together with the back up and support it provides, is what makes the PFI different to other OEMs.

If printed in house, there are marks, perhaps a barcode, to indicate the posi-tion of the printed image and to download settings into the PC used to drive the cutter. Each mark is designed in high contrast to make it easy for the camera to pick up. When cutting out a fully foiled image which might cause others problems, the mark is adjusted accordingly.

For BCA it is the combination of smart cutting with personalised foiling that is really exciting and sparks the ideas which will excite clients. The company has already struck a deal with a nearby carton printer to handle either samples or ultra short runs, where the cost of a die is not justified by the job and there are multiple skus, each with a slightly different design.

One is for a firm producing a CBD oil. It needed ten of one design, 25 or a second and 300 of a third. Next time the mix might be different and ultimately the numbers could become enough to justify printing on offset and finishing on a conventional die cutter. The printer might have ten small clients like this. Some may not stay the course, others might blossom into major customers. Unless it could cope with short runs, farming these to BCA, it will never discover whether the acorn will take root.

Cottee does not mind. He knows BCA has to keep innovating or be lost in the morass of products and suppliers able to produce standard products very cheaply.

The Duplo PFI Blade can cut out shapes on a variety of materials.


CARTONS PROFILE MIDLAND REGIONAL PRINTERS

MRP’s future is MRP’s future is on the cartonson the cartonsNottingham printer is benefiting from its ability to produce different types of packaging including cartons and self adhesive labels.

MIDLAND REGIONAL PRINTERS is proof that a printer can change its spots. The company was a standard commercial printer when it began trading more than 50 years ago. Today while it continues to print leaflets, brochures and so on on a Speed-master XL106, the majority of its work is based on packaging: cartons, corrugated and labels.

“We are quite unique,” says sales director Matt Seaford, “in that we are offering such a wide range of services. It really is a one stop shop approach. Customers can come to us for brochures, labels and display units thanks to installation of a Lamina. We can do all the parts for a customer.”

This has always been the case. From the outset the company has wanted to keep as much as possible inhouse. If a customer asks for something, MRP has always preferred to say ‘why not’ rather than ‘no’. “We had a customer ask if we could produce phar-maceutical leaflets for them because he was unhappy with the service received from an existing supplier. That prompted us to say ‘let’s look at it’ and work out if we can offer the service to other people,” he says.

MRP IS NOT TAKING ON THE MAJOR packaging groups, but neither is it produc-ing only tiny runs for start up and micro businesses. It is, however, exploiting its ability to be more flexible than the multi plant groups. One customer is a luxury chocolate brand which MRP shares with a much larger carton printing company. That company has focused on the longer runs, so an order for fewer than 10,000 units will come to the Nottingham printer.

And the same applies to labels where this year MRP installed a Mark Andy Digital label press alongside its flexo machine. This follows on from the investment in the six-

colour XL106 and EasyMatrix cutting and creasing platen, both from Heidelberg, in 2017. This has joined a Sanwa platen and two carton gluing lines.

“The focus in the last five years has defi-nitely shifted towards packaging,” says Seaford. “Now we are more of a packaging printer than we are a commercial printer. We replaced a ten-colour perfector used for commercial work and the CD for carton work with the XL106. That has a much faster makeready giving us more capacity with a single press than we had with three previously.

“It was not so long ago that we looked at ways of subletting half the factory space here. Now we barely have room to swing a cat.”

AND IN ANSWER TO THE AGE OLD question what came first the carton or the label, Seaford answers. “We will print cartons first and colour match flexo or digital to these. A customer for a cosmetics rebrand came in for a carton pass in the morning, had lunch and passed the label in the afternoon. They then went off with some sheets for the

product photography for the launch. The approach means that it is harder for someone to take the risk of moving one part of their work away from us. Meanwhile it’s down to MRP to make sure we get the colours right on every product.”

The company wants to continue with the full service approach rather than special-ise to the degree that it loses its flexibility. This is playing to trends where brands are changing the way they buy, away from over ordering and filling a warehouse because this is less expensive per carton. But they will also have to pay for cartons that do not get used and for warehousing space.

“Smarter buyers have realised it’s better to pay more per unit and order every four weeks rather than pay for warehouse and stock management. We have one customer doing this and it works very well for them.” It means that unused print is no longer recycled when artwork needs to change if branding, ingredients or legislation changes. The frequent ordering system is more envi-ronmentally friendly. “Sustainability is on everyone’s lips,” he says.

During the lockdown, MRP installed its first digital label press choosing a Mark Andy Digital Pro3 using toner technology.


MIDLAND REGIONAL PRINTERS CARTONS PROFILE

Plastic, or anything looking like plastic, is a no-go area. One customer, says Seaford, had switched from plastic to a starch based material for a box inlay tray, but received criticism on social media for continuing to use plastic because of its appearance. MRP designed a means of holding the product in place using board. An in-house studio has this capability and is kept busy on creating concepts for box designs, the artwork being designed by the client.

On occasions this can mean guiding the client away from the subtle pastel shades which might look good on a screen, but less so on a retailer’s shelf. It means guidance on the appropriate materials to use to make the packaging work.

Just because the substrate is 350-400gsm it does not make this a cartonboard as companies buying from digital printers have found.

“Some digital printers are using thicker brochure papers rather than the right boards and are producing boxes that do not make up or stand up properly,” he says.

THE PANDEMIC PERIOD HAS BEEN positive for all packaging printers, though this has not spilled over into orders for the Christmas period. “A lot of retailers have cut back on seasonal promotional packag-ing this year,” says Seaford. “We have not been producing as many Christmas specials and a lot of the traditional gift packs have not been produced this year and many are repeating the packaging that was used last year.”

But then lots of Christmas work has fallen by the wayside this year and MRP has been insulated from the worst of conditions by focusing on packaging rather than fight-ing for commercial print work. A decision taken a few years ago, is paying off big time.

WHILE�TRADITIONAL�CARTON printers will warn that moving from commercial to carton printing is too difficult, there is an increasing number of companies in this country that show that it is possible to print cartons alongside catalogues, or to move from low margins leaflets to boxes for the same set of customers.

Delga Group has moved steadily in the direction of packaging print in recent years. The Stroud, Kent, business has always printed with carton boards for record sleeves, this became CD boxes and, more recently, presentation boxes for the entertainment industry.

Now the company had invested in an HP Indigo 12000 HD adapted to print carton board and, this year, in a Highcon Euclid to produce short run die cut cartons alongside a Bobst platen that handles the long run work. “With the Highcom, what is a three- or four-hour makeready on the Bobst becomes 30 minutes – and there are no extreme die costs,” says managing director Ian Conetta.

“And it’s going to help when a customer changes his mind and needs an extra 500 cartons for next day delivery. That would mean orders have to go back on the platen with all the waste of time and material involved. It is going to help with the flexibility of demands that we have from customers.”

Its customer range has extended into luxury packaging, into personal care products and into vape liquid boxes.

Another that has moved in the direction of vaping liquids is Ultragraph in Burscough. It has moved from a Petratto for making up the cartons to a Duran folder gluer line. The company has posted advice for the companies creating the variety of flavours and liquid types: “Firstly, with so much choice already on the shelves your

packaging will need

to be eye catching and informative if it is to find its market.

“Secondly, eliquid packaging must be tough enough to protect the product inside while it is in storage, in transit and in stock. Sub par packaging could easily lead to a stock loss at any point in the sale process, as the product inside the packaging is invariably stored in glass bottles.

“Lastly, there is legislation governing how eliquid can be sold and packaged. Regulations introduced in 2017 state that refill containers must not exceed 10ml.”

Regulations pervade any type of packaging. There will be requirements on the legibility of small text and what this text has to say. There will be rules, as with vaping, about the sizes and styles of boxes.

As well as helping to design these, Ultragraph has created different types of point of sale display. Constructional design as well as graphic design becomes part of the service that may have to be offered.

Remous in Somerset is happy to switch between commercial and packaging products with a website, shortrunpackaging.co.uk to focus on this side of its work. It ranges from CD wallets to boxes for model soldiers and luxury packaging for local artisanal producers of cider, brandy and other countryside drinks. These stand up in terms of quality, with foiling and embossing, and with packaging used by the major drinks brands and supplied by the major packaging groups. The only difference is that the run lengths are that much smaller, well below the threshold that the groups would be interested in. This is where there is space for companies to develop into packaging suppliers.

ROOM AT THE BOTTOM


CARTONS SUPPLIER PROFILE KOENIG & BAUER

KOENIG & KOENIG & BAUER HAS BAUER HAS THE X FACTORTHE X FACTORKOENIG & BAUER HAS THIS YEAR UNVEILED THE RAPIDA X, ITS MOST ADVANCED AND BEST LOOKING LITHO PRESS TO DATE. AND IT HAS POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS DECLARING IT HAS THE WOW FACTOR.

THIS IS THE TIME OF YEAR WHEN, by tradition, people gather for end of year award ceremonies. The Koenig & Bauer 1814 Production Excellence award was no exception. It has celebrated the success of a Koenig & Bauer customer in achieving a notable performance on one of its sheetfed presses, perhaps the sheer number of sheets on the floor in a 24 hour period, perhaps an array of different jobs in short order, or rapid makereadies where, thanks to the K&B technology, the user has saved vast amounts of waste and time compared to how the same job had been printed previously.

THE PRINTERS, OFTEN ONE FROM a packaging background, one a commercial printer, would gather in front of journalists and with Koenig & Bauer executives for a lunch to hand over a model of the machine which in 1814 had revolutionised produc-tion of The Times in London. The roll call of winners, APS, Simply Cartons, Thomp-son Colour, DG3 Leycol and Offset Print & Packaging included, have become bench-mark users for the press provider.

This is deliberate, part of a strategy adopted when Andrew Pang became manag-ing director of KBA UK as it was then, and Chris Scully became sheetfed sales director. Prior to that point KBA had been keen to build a user base as wide as possible and so increase its market share. “Before we joined it was all about making KBA the biggest. For us it was all about being strategic, about trying to play to our strengths,” says Pang.

That has meant targeting customers with the stability and financial strength to invest. And for the most part it has worked, particularly in the cartons sector where, after winning Simply Cartons, other inde-pendent carton printers have been converted to Koenig & Bauer’s technology. “These fantastic reference sites have given us the credibility in the market that we have at the moment,” Scully adds.

In turn those reference sites provide cred-ibility to press demonstrations whether in situ or online. “And unless you have that credibility, people will not believe what they are seeing, We are a long way down the road from where we were five years ago,” he says.

The same approach is working beyond the sheetfed presses. It is starting to move Iberica platens and has a Flexotechnica flexo press being delivered during lockdown. Other engineers have been able to carry out sheetfed press installations, as has happened at Alexir and at Bell & Bain.

THE REPUTATION IT HAS carefully built up has been important this year when the company had planned to launch what would surely have been the most talked about press at Drupa. Instead it has had to rely on conference calls, videos and online demonstrations to introduce the machine. That press, the Rapida 106 X, is strikingly different to a conventional looking press. “We have always had the technology, now we have something that’s a little bit special,” says Scully. “People comment on how good

the machine looks. Previously Koenig & Bauer machines had an industrial look and feel: now we are getting the wow factor.

“A lot of our customers are becom-ing businesses that are increasingly image conscious, particularly those in luxury packaging. These companies have been very low profile, very manilla. They now want something that shows the changing face to what packaging is and we have machine that is exciting to look at.”

IT IS NOT JUST STYLISH LOOKS. “We have people participating who are expecting a certain level of productivity, performance and speed. They see a job which had been printing at 16,000sph now running at 20,000sph.

“Some of those that have seen the demos have simply been lost for words.”

The striking looks are due to dark glass iPhone shaped panels which cover the side frames. The press, though, has more to it than a distinctive appearance. At the extreme Koenig & Bauer can supply a plate delivery system to carry exposed plates to the correct printing unit on the press. This is unnecessary for most printers.

However, the steep increase in short run jobs has underlined the importance of relieving stress on the operator by automat-ing as much of the process as possible. In short, the operator’s role is not to tell the machine what to do, instead the machine tells him what action is needed, usually involving the press of a button.


KOENIG & BAUER CARTONS SUPPLIER PROFILE

This needs buy in from operators, says Scully. The business owner on the other hand can be convinced by the look of the press, but it has to perform for the opera-tor. He suggests that it is, operators want to get their hands on it and they are proud to do so. Demand for Koenig & Bauer branded merchandise is increasing.

The simultaneous plate change technology and SIS infeed are established technologies that make the operator’s life easier. Now comes a range of colour management tools that bring the press into colour and keeps it there.

SCULLY SAYS: “COLOUR CONTROL is definitely the biggest thing going forward. We have now made it a seamless part of the process, with inspection seamless as well. This examines every part of every sheet at varying resolutions.

“In demonstrations, the problem we have is that everything happens so fast nobody can see it. We provide a crib sheet to allow those watching the demo to follow what is happening and what they should be looking at at what point.”

The Koenig & Bauer demonstration centre at the sheetfed factory near Dresden has multiple machines in different configu-rations alongside each other for the simple reason that what a commercial or book printer wants to see will be different to the requirements for a packaging press. The company needs to be able to demonstrate precisely what a customer wants to see, especially as visits to reference sites are currently out of bounds.

THE FIRST OF THE X GENERATION presses to reach these shores is likely to be installed next year, though until companies can get close up with the press, nobody is going to confirm an order. Being able to touch and smell the press is a large part to

making the investment, Scully explains. And nobody will sign off on a machine via a Zoom call.

The extension of CBils and other government backed programmes to stimu-late investment will provide some of the confidence that commercial printers lack at present, says Pang. “They will need to invest, but will need certainty. Commercial printers still want to do something, but they can’t afford to until they know the outcome of Covid and Brexit. Some of the groups are continuing to invest, but the problem is the uncertainty print faces and no business likes uncertainty.

“In contrast, most of the areas in pack-aging have been busy – we just have to find ways to give customers the assurances they want and show them what they need to see during live and interactive demonstrations.”

It is not only demonstrations that are online. For many years Koenig & Bauer has had to convince prospects that while it has fewer service engineers in the UK than rivals, it also has fewer machines, but also that the days when a visit from an engineer was the first and automatic response when a customer calls the service desk are ending. Persuading customers that remote service should be the first line, then an engineer’s visit if needed, had been a struggle. That is changing.

“The pandemic has focused people on the possibilities of remote service and support,” says Scully. “It has always been there, now people are saying that this is the way they want to do service going forwards.” There is a reluctance to allow outside people onto a customer’s premises particularly in packag-ing plants, just in case this introduces Covid to the workforce.

Scully continues: “We will always try to solve an issue remotely, then will send an engineer afterwards if necessary. Covid has pushed this into the industry and changes

the established approach. The way they have always done it is not necessarily the best way today. People do not like change, because it creates uncertainty.”

People have been forced to change by the circumstances, and this has had an impact on Koenig & Bauer itself. Work from home has been the rule rather than the exception and online sales meetings have taken over from the physical get togethers. Online sales calls have in turn become standard for a sales team that by tradition likes to meet prospects face to face.

At the start of the first lockdown some in the team were far from convinced. “Now they are all buying into it,” Scully explains. Documentation and administration have gone into the cloud to be shared among the team to good effect. The company has been able to adapt.

SO TOO HAVE ITS CUSTOMERS. Packaging printers have been busy, but so have some of the commercial printers. APS with two B1 Rapidas is running at 6 million impressions each a month, produc-ing documentation for government and other institutions; Bell & Bain is full to the gunnels, according to Scully, with book work.

Elsewhere in commercial printing, says Pang, the pandemic is changing how busi-nesses work. A model which is based on high volumes and low margins has been broken as volumes have dropped. “This is the Easyjet model,” he says. “The numbers do not stack up any more. Nobody could have predicted what has happened this year. For the first time though we can look at print as an industry and say ‘this is an industry that is not going anywhere’. Our customers have been very good a reacting to the situa-tion and while volumes in commercial print may never come back, there are some really, really good opportunities out there.”

Chris Scully at the showroom which has been off limits for much of this year. Right: APS has twin installations of Koenig & Bauer B1 presses which have been running continuously during the pandemic.


DIGITAL ROUND TABLE RICOH

HOW TO HOW TO SURVIVE IN SURVIVE IN A PANDEMICA PANDEMICIN SIX MONTHS THE WORLD AND THE INDUSTRY HAVE BEEN RESHAPED BY THE MOST DEVASTATING OF CIRCUMSTANCES. AS WE REACH THE END OF THIS TUMULTUOUS YEAR, WE SAT DOWN DIGITALLY WITH THREE PRINTERS AND WITH ONE SUPPLIER TO ASK HOW THEIR BUSINESSES HAVE ADAPTED TO WHAT IS GOING ON AROUND THEM.DIGITISATION MIGHT BE THE indus-try’s word of the year. Processes that had yet to be digitised are rapidly being digit-ised because they have to be. The printing industry is less about long runs with the same message to everyone (the latter from Downing Street at the start of the pandemic being an exception), than it is about “deliv-ering the right message to the right person” at the tight time, says Ricoh UK national sales director Simon Isaacs.

If there had been a round table instead of a Zoom gallery those seated would have nodded. The three printers present, Funky Pigeon, represented by managing direc-tor Richard Pepper, Wellington Press by managing director Nick Murray and Mailing and Marketing Solutions with its managing director Danny Narey (added digitally). Alongside Isaacs, Tim Carter, Ricoh UK commercial print sales director, flew the flag for the digital press, or rather communica-tions technology provider.

The right message to the right person at the right time sums up Funky Pigeon’s busi-ness model. It is one of the leading online greetings cards and gifts suppliers in the country using more than 9 million envelopes a year. The pandemic has been good for business, says Pepper.

With no high street shops open, consum-ers turned to online suppliers. The problem

was that the company was only allowed two people in its Guernsey factory at any one time: two were printing from 6am and two more took over to finish and pack cards in time for that day’s post. The company had to turn to external suppliers to cope he says. “At first we worked around the clock to get the orders to the other printers we used. This time around we are more organised,” he says.

His business evolved from the idea that people would surely buy cards through internet sites with the ability to personalise them. It was a family affair, orders received up stairs, placed in CD racks as pigeon holes to be sorted and sent out. There were exter-nal printers used before the opening of the 4,000m2 factory in Guernsey. Now Funky Pigeon is looking for a 2,000m2 location on the UK mainland.

THE NAME CAME FROM A WINE inspired ideas session, starting as Speedy Pigeon in reference to the character in Dastardly & Mutley cartoons, changing to Funky Pigeon. It was the name as much as the business model that inspired WH Smith to buy the business in 2010, Pepper says.

With that the business gained wings. WH Smith was able to invest in the marketing needed to put the brand on TV and radio, across social media and so on. “They prom-

ised a huge amount of marketing money,” he says, “that was needed to establish Funky Pigeon as a new brand. Without that we wouldn’t be here today. And we still spend 17% of revenue on marketing.”

THE REVELATION ABOUT THE non print allied name sparked Murray into thinking about a change of identity for the Wellington Press online print site that has been developed during the lockdown. The East London business, in the shadow of the Olympic Park, had been struck by the pandemic as most of its business comes from central London and from companies with offices there.

One international law firm customer has 6,000 employees needing business cards in batches of 100 at a time with myriad languages, including Chinese.

These offices have been closed, ending demand for business cards, for print associ-ated with events, for the day to day work that Wellington, within 15 minutes of the City on a good day, lived on. “The business is still there but not to the same extent,” Murray adds.

HE IS THE THIRD GENERATION to run a business that has evolved through letterpress to litho and now to large format inkjet and small format digital, at first with


RICOH DIGITAL ROUND TABLE

The round table participants agreed that digitisation is driving more print and more types of print just that runs are shorter and more tailored thanks of the explosion in online ordering.

an Indigo and now with a brace of Ricohs. The letterpress machine continues to earn its place for cutting and creasing work, the litho press for longer runs. “A lot of our work is done on the digital presses rather than litho,” Murray says. “The litho press is running today, but hasn’t been doing much over the period.”

CUSTOMERS ARE AGNOSTIC ABOUT which technology is used while being able to print white or an extra colour on the C7200 is a way to give people added value and to help out.”

He describes a job that used this feature to good effect, printing on a grey Colorplan material in white and then foiling this, and using the printed sheets to wrap around a presentation box, taking three days from start to finish and meeting the customer’s deadline. It would have been impossible within that timeframe without digital print-ing, just as Funky Pigeon’s business could not exist without digital print.

WELLINGTON HAS HAD A WEB TO print operation based on Infigo’s Catfish technology for a Housing Association customer enabling them to order collateral that is needed in the business, but never a business to consumer website. That has changed.

Murray says the company has been working with a local artist to support the work that she sells through an Instagram page. “We thought let’s give this a go,” he says. Staff who would otherwise have been idle during lockdown, have been building a new site from the ground up with these resources rather than paying Infigo. “It has given people a focus and kept them busy when otherwise they would have worried abut the business.”

WHILE WELLINGTON DOES NOT have the resources to market the brand in the same way that WH Smith has for Funky Pigeon, it is using the power of the 22,000 followers that the artist has on Instagram to market the print on demand service under the name WePrintDirect.com. “Having heard Rich-ard’s story, we might to think again about the name,” he says. “We buy from Funky Pigeon so we know that it works.”

The drive to online ordering is equally having an impact on MAMS business, says Narey. It is the first in the UK to install the Ricoh Pro VC70000 continuous feed inkjet press to produce paper wraps for subscrip-tion copies of magazines and to replace envelopes on direct mail jobs, particularly as a faster alternative to the long lead time needed to order bespoke envelopes.

There is no direct to consumer business

for the Leeds company but the move to online shopping has had a beneficial effect on the business. “Magazine subscriptions went through the ceiling during the first lock-down when people wanted entertainment a home,” he says. While these are personalised with a name and address, the technology can go further and the conversations with publishers include marketing messages tailored to the individual subscribers.

“Online retail has also taken off and they have to drive activity to their websites, sending out brochure on brochure to do this. We have found that a clicks and bricks busi-ness becomes a clicks alone business and customers that didn’t have clicks had to get online pretty quickly, or they failed.”

THIS HAS APPLIED IN PRINT TOO, says Carter. “Talking to our customers those with a solid online presence have not been immune to Covid but they have been successful in spite of Covid while others have actually thrived through Covid as buyers, whether companies or consumers, have moved more and more of their activity online.”

It has in short accelerated a change that has been underway. Certainly this is the case for Funky Pigeon. “Our business is two years ahead of where it should be thanks to Covid. We are getting people buying …


DIGITAL ROUND TABLE RICOH

cards in volume. We had a customer buying perhaps 50 cards for different dates as he went off to a war zone.

“We use email to remind other people to come and order before the occasion that they send the cards for. Christmas is our biggest season with people sending 20 or as many as 200-300 cards.”

THE COMPANY IS NOW investigating the sorts of mass market designs that are bought in high street shops with Funky Pigeon adding a personalised message. “The greetings card is an extremely inno-vative product,” he says. What it cannot do is accommodate deviation from standard formats for bespoke orders. “Every time I look at this I discover that it’s something that will cost me money,” says Pepper.

Innovation for Wellington Press has been a move to produce Covid related items, including floor stickers. “When this started I learned more about floor graphics materi-als in two weeks than I thought possible, the difference between R10 and R12 materials,” says Murray.

The company has been delivering these to a local authority customer. “Getting the product was tricky at the beginning because everybody wanted it, now I’m hoping that as the original ones suffer in the weather, orders will come around again.”

ITS BUSINESS THOUGH HAS BEEN moved forwards during the pandemic, even if customers are less likely to be at their desks. The ability to deliver added value through the long sheet capability of the presses and the additional colour is paying off, allowing Wellington to print on the Colorplan and Keay Colour materials. “We like the extra things that the machine offers. The ability to print white on the 7200 really does work for us,” he adds.

The growth in online activity is feeding

into MAMS, stimulating demand for direct mail “because these retailers want to drive activity towards their websites. In turn that is driving a greater use of print. There are perhaps 1.4 million websites out there and the question is how do you cut through. If you have a website you must advertise that fact and once people start interacting with the website you have to service that customer.

“Tools like JICMail are giving us the intelligence into how print is being used as a marketing platform.”

Like many, Narey would want to return to face to face physical meetings with customers rather than conducting business online and through a third party. The online

meeting is however essential. “I would much rather get together in a room to share a handshake. Selling is quite difficult when you are meeting people virtually,” he says.

GETTING THE POSITION WHERE A website is a highly visible brand is expensive. Funky Pigeon launched its first television ad in 2010. It cost £400,000, says Pepper, and aired at completely the wrong time. This year the company is using a combination of television and local radio in Manchester. “To get the sales online you have to have a presence,” Pepper says. It does not have to be that expensive for a business to business operation, but it takes effort.

And there will be no return to pre pandemic ways of doing business. Murray reckons that it will take a full six months after the pandemic ends for his customers to recover; Carter reckons six to nine months for business to flow back. Online is here to stay because buyers will find it easier and more convenient and they will have tried it in other areas if not print.

Digitisation of sales through the inter-net is now established. It is not new. Carter recalls: “When I started my digital journey with Indigo back in 1995 there was a wide choice of applications to enable printers to start to get an online presence and then scale up. There are still options and systems with relatively low costs.

“NOW THE ABILITY TO RESPOND quickly and to be agile to customer require-ments is more important than ever before. This offers a genuine opportunity for every organisation to reposition themselves and flex for the future to meet those chang-ing customer needs, where print remains a powerful part of the marketing mix. The role for print will continue and this makes me genuinely excited for the future.”

It has taken time for online to become established as an accepted way of working if not yet always the preferred way of working. The pandemic, however, has accelerated this leg of the journey to to the digitisation of the printing industry.

Says Issacs: “Digitisation is playing a huge part in getting the right message to the right person and to add value to the organisa-tions that printers are serving, from a small restaurant to a huge organisation or to the end customer.

“We need to create print organisations that stand out from the competition, which might be Google or television companies, we have to create differentiation and as printers we have to provide value for their customers. And that applies just as much to Ricoh.”

Danny Narey says that magazine subscriptions soared as the first lockdown hit and that direct mail is being used to drive consumers to websites.

Nick Murray is experiencing more work ending up on his digital presses than on his litho press as established sources of work have been replaced in recent months.


KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL SUPPLIER PROFILE

DISRUPTION KONICA MINOLTA STYLEKonica�Minolta�has�had�a�lower�profile�than�perhaps�its�products�deserve.�Now�changes�are�underway�that�put�production�printing�in�the�spotlight.

MARK ASH DID NOT WANT TO join Konica Minolta UK as head of its produc-tion and industrial print division to occupy a role and keep business ticking over. The early signs are that he is getting what he wants.

He was enticed by Rob Ferris, who took over as CEO of Konica Minolta Business Solutions UK in May this year. “I know what Rob is looking to achieve and that he wants to transform Konica Minolta because we both believe that KM is capable of much more.

“But it needs a business transformation to start to do things differently. It’s about getting the right people in the right roles, about ensuring we have simple business processes, to talk about technology in a different way and to put the customer at the heart of the business.”

While Ferris joined Konica Minolta after 18 continuous years at Canon, latterly as country director of sales and professional services, Ash’s career path has been more peripatetic, though Xerox has frequently been present.

HIS FIRST JOB AT XEROX WAS running a machine in a print room, which led on to managing print rooms and selling print across private, corporate and public sectors. There have been office products and production print, adding up to extensive experiences across print that will be used in the new role.

This year he also spent time laid flat in hospital after a cycling accident. This is not a recommended career move but will also contribute experience to the new job.

Now he is raring to go, aiming to change the profile of Konica Minolta, the way it does business and the way it is perceived by printers. There is no question about the company’s technology, the inkjet KM1E is out on its own in terms of B2 UV inkjet printing; the C120000 and C140000 as high speed production toner presses are at least the equal of anything else in their class and include technology which is unique to Konica Minolta; there is a toner based digital label press which is likewise a leader in its field; and then there’s MGI’s enhancement technologies and all manner of software applications for business and marketing.

In the wider sphere, Konica Minolta has acquired marketing services businesses, has optical lens technology, precision colour measurement equipment, inkjet print-heads used in single-pass textile printing

and medical equipment. It is a breadth of technology that is not matched by its rivals. It allows cross pollination of ideas and tech-nologies to good effect. The IQ501 quality control module that is inside the colour presses calls on the lens and measurement divisions to create a unique way of mapping colour and delivering output consistency on a press.

“EVERY SUPPLIER THINKS THEY have great technology. It’s not about simply putting great technology in front of custom-ers. It’s about helping them to market themselves or to have the conversations with the marketing agencies that work with print. That’s a different conversation to speeds and features. We don’t want to talk to them about print technology but about what the printer can do for them,” he says.

The appeal of the job, says Mark Ash, is in being able to implement a different direction for Konica Minolta sales to professional print in the UK.

…


DIGITAL SUPPLIER PROFILE KONICA MINOLTA

As an example, he talks about Gener-ate, an augmented reality technology that has been on offer for a couple of years, but in the hands of print providers it has not become widespread enough to achieve the break through. Printers cannot join the elements of the story, or else lack the cred-ibility to convince marketing agencies and departments.

INSTEAD, SAYS ASH, THE APPROACH should be to target specific vertical sectors or sub sectors, the supplier working in collabo-ration with the print service provider. There is, he suggests, potential for the AR technol-ogy in the housing market, bringing a printed brochure to life by linking the picture of a room to a 360º view of the room on a phone, triggered by scanning the image.

Property in different price brackets could be enhanced by a simple spin round image through to more sophisticated virtual walk throughs for a small country estate. It allows the agent to offer the seller a better service, it gives the potential buyer a better pre viewing experience and serves as a reminder of what they have seen, and cuts out unnec-essary visits for both sides.

Konica Minolta has the clout to work with the printer in approaching the agency groups where a printer alone might struggle.

There will benefits too in using augmented reality in other sectors. Ash points out that it can help overcome one of the key issues of e-commerce – disappointed customers who return items that are the wrong colour or the wrong size. The supplier has to insure costs from handling returns, sorting, cleaning and remarketing them. Stock levels need to be high enough to cope with this. In addition there are the costs of paperwork and admin to consider.

The solution, according to Ash, should involve a printed catalogue and the use of augmented reality to overlay products into a room setting, with items of matched cloth-ing or accessories which could help with right first time ordering, a reduction in multiple orders and a big dip in the volume of returns.

“It took us 30 minutes in collaboration with the printer to show this to a marketing agency with the response ‘Yes, we can sell that’,” he says.

He wants Konica Minolta to leverage this technology and this sort to presentation to drive demand for print from market-ing agencies, responsible for substantial amounts of print purchasing, and as a byproduct increased demand for Konica Minolta products and services.

“I will be out there talking to printers and to marketing agencies, meeting them on their premises when possible, to discuss the challenges they face. We want to be able to prove these concepts, perhaps with estate agencies or an e-commerce business to understand what the impact is of returns on revenues.

“THAT’S WHAT WILL SELL THIS, the savings that augmented print achieves. It’s about the value it delivers,” he says.

Konica Minolta is intending to deliver value in other ways. Remote service is coming. Ash remembers his days of working nights in a print room and needing an engi-neer. “I learned that rather than go through the official channels, I would act as an angry customer. It required a bit of role playing to get an engineer fast, but it worked,” he says. “Today who wants to see an engi-neer? Corporate and IT support are remote services, so why not print. People want the problem fixed remotely and that’s exactly what we can bring to customers now.

“People no longer judge us by the response times to get an engineer out even with an

excellent first time fix rate. It’s about the up time and overall availability of

the device and how fast we can get it working. This changes

the service game: commercial print-

ers want their m a c h i n e

working, so if we can fix it remotely they will be happier than if they have to wait for an engineer, even if he arrives in record time.”

This is possible because of the amount of data that is collected on the machine’s performance and by examining the big data, to identify the causes of a break down, even before it takes place. Data is also about how to optimise quality and consistency of output, and data can be used to iden-tify prospects for Konica Minolta and its network of dealers to follow up.

Konica Minolta will target customers using digital channels and will then work with dealers to follow up on the interest. The dealer channels will be able to handle the entire range of products, from light production presses through to the high performance C12000 and C14000 and also for the first time, the KM1 B2 inkjet press.

UK sales to date have been slow at best. “The KM1 is a fantastic product,” says Ash. It is also somewhat of a niche product, using UV inks rather than aqueous. This enables it to print on materials that other B2 digital presses might find impossible or may strug-gle with. The MGI embellishment machines can also use this route to market.

“It is a shift from account based marketing to a more value based approach,” he says. “It is recognition that print does not operate in a vacuum. These are changes that are about how best to service customers and the changes are now taking effect.” The direct sales teams are being dismantled as respon-sibility for end customer relationships passes to dealers.

PRINTERS OUGHT TO GET A SERVICE that is more bespoke to their needs rather than something that a sales team has to promote. It is a change of approach that is more responsive to market needs and the way that print is being used and the way that businesses are operating online now. He describes a personal care business that is thriving online without advertising and without a physical pres-ence on the high street. The videos that are posted online of customers unboxing their purchase have become its marketing mate-rial. Companies like this are disrupting conventional thinking and traditional ways of doing business. “It’s the combination of a physical experience and a brand experience – but the journey started with a digital link.

“At Konica Minolta, we have to become a positive disruptor or we will be disrupted,” says Ash.

The KM1E was introduced this year as an upgrade to the B2 UV inkjet press

…


XAAR DIGITAL SUPPLIER PROFILE

XAAR IS FIRING ON ALL NOZZLES

CAMBRIDGE IS A WORLD CENTRE for inkjet printing, spawning the likes of Linx, ElmJet, Xennia, Tonejet and the twin light-houses for this technology cluster, Domino Printing Sciences and Xaar.

While the first of these has enjoyed a buoyant five years – acquisition by Brother, success with label printing and now expan-sion into corrugated print – the other has struggled.

Xaar had soared on the back of the tran-sition to digital printing in ceramics, where tile making switched from conventional print to inkjet in two intense years. In search of the next opportunity and conscious that the investment cycle for ceramics must change, Xaar pitched into development of a thin film piezo printhead. This would fire an aqueous ink, something almost essential for the coming markets in textile printing and particularly packaging, predicted to become the next massive market.

But after pouring millions of pounds into the 5601 printhead without the expected return, Xaar pulled the plug. Chief execu-tive Doug Edwards was replaced by John Mills, lately CEO of Inca Digital Printing, another alumnus of the Cambridge inkjet school. His immediate task was to steady the rocking ship and repair the damage caused by the commitment to thin film piezo.

Thin film piezo is espoused by the likes of Fujifilm Dimatix, Epson, and Kyocera – the leading piezo printhead suppliers in the world. Xaar is the only non-Japanese piezo printhead company and building a thin film head to stay in the game alongside these giants was not only logical, but thought essential if Xaar was to stay in contention. It is also a long and expensive game.

There is the initial development, the need to engage with potential customers, followed by testing the design, locking this in place, organising manufacture to ensure consistent quality and being able to deliver the quanti-

ties that customers might want. And these customers need time to develop and bring to market their products before substantial orders are placed. Xaar hit some production issues while customers slipped away to rival products that were more readily available. And orders were not forthcoming.

“It was the right thing to start the thin film technology project, to develop a high speed, high resolution print head for a pack-aging market estimated to be worth $800 billion,” says Mills.

“But the digitally printed packaging market has not materialised. It will get there, but at the moment it’s a migration rate of 1-2% a year; it’s not going to be like ceram-ics where the switch was overnight.”

When Mills joined Xaar he had to create and weave a story that points towards a future for the business, the employees, customers and shareholders. Xaar is far from a basket case. It has plenty of cash in the bank, continues to be cash positive and generates revenue of some £50 million a year. And if the one-time mid-term target of £200 million revenue a year has receded

into the distance, Mills believes Xaar will get there. By a more indirect route than the fast track.

Like anyone involved in inkjet in Cambridge, Mills knew, or thought he knew Xaar and its technology. At Inca he had always been impressed with the challenge posed by Agfa’s MPress to Inca’s Onset. It was very fast thanks to its ability to print a heavy pigment load so could cover the substrate faster, says Mills. MPress used Xaar printheads.

The Xaar head can also switch from a 7pl droplet to a high lay down mode where it can apply 100pl drops. This is incredibly useful when trying to print a varnish, a white layer on a clear film or a black layer on a double sided image.

That is the sort of feature that makes Xaar unique, and when it begins to deliver printheads with the robust silicon plate that Mills is promising, it is the sort of feature that OEMs can apply in their machines to good effect.

“Speed is about the burst capacity of the printer. It is needed when the user gets an

After�a�torrid�time�Xaar�has�regrouped,�sharpened�up�its�technology�and�is�stressing�the�unique�features�that�can�revive�its�fortunes.

John Milla has been quiet since taking over as CEO of Xaar, spending the time reorganising the company internally and redirectiing development teams to good effect.

…


DIGITAL SUPPLIER PROFILE XAAR

order to turnaround fast. If he can do this, he wins the work; if his press cannot print at this speed, the order goes elsewhere,” says Mills. “And there is a good margin for work that can be printed at the last minute.”

Xaar’s technology had been founded first on a piezo system where the piezo crystals flexed the walls of the ink chamber, rather than the end or the roof. The design allowed Xaar to develop a through flow system that keeps the ink moving through the print-head chambers themselves, which no other companies can.

THIS TECHNOLOGY HAS BEEN KEY to enabling Xaar to print with highly viscous and other challenging inks, reaching the applications that other printheads cannot reach, or find difficult. This has suited the inks used in ceramic tile printing. Currently it suits inks used for printing on glass, which are a further step more difficult than ceram-ics says Mills. The Xaar technology has suited UV inks and it suits the materials used in 3D printing and also for direct to object printing, another market that lags behind forecasts.

When Mills arrived in the Huntingdon headquarters a year ago with the task of putting the company back on its feet, he found that while a lot of projects had been put on ice as the company focused efforts on thin film technology, the engineers involved with the earlier projects had been able to work below the radar on them, if not full time.

These projects were dusted off, refreshed and became the foundation for the new look Xaar. This is literally the case because the company’s marketing is getting a new look, the bulk ink printhead technology becoming the ImagineX portfolio, which will be foun-dation for the business in its next chapter.

The technology platform is not simply a refresh of five year old technology, but something that combines that heritage

with IP developed for the aborted thin film project. One promise of the 5601 was that it would take Xaar in aqueous markets: that is still on the cards, ready for packaging appli-cations as they evolve or anything else where water based inkjet is desirable.

A new corporate video promises that “if you can imagine it, you can print it” as a passenger jet flies overhead. That is a tall ask, but Xaar has the technology, now owned jointly with Stratasys, to 3D print components for aircraft. More prosaically it has the technology to be a real contender in wide format graphics, and in multiple industrial applications that see the benefits of digital printing adding inkjet modules to existing manufacturing lines.

Take flooring for example. The likes of Forbo Flooring can print bespoke designs on its Eternal vinyl material at plants across Europe as part of a manufacturing process. The designs can be used in pubs, in schools, in offices. This is a long way removed from a printer knocking out pop up banners as cheaply as possible on a 1.6 metre wide machine.

Many of the 30 companies that have started projects with Xaar in the last nine months fall into the industrial category. “They want a printhead that meets their own purposes, not to make a machine to sell. We call these user developer integra-tors and these may have 1,000 production lines around the world,” says Mills. “If people waft the money under our nose we are prepared to do something.”

Xaar can deliver a production print module together with the ink supply and electronics far faster than perhaps its rivals. This is a virtue both of its size which enables greater agility, and its experience with diffi-cult applications. “It might take another developer two or three years to come up with a working system. we can come up with something in 12 months,” he says. “That is a huge opportunity for us.”

Textile print is rapidly converting to inkjet production, currently using scan-ning head printers and dye inks, but poised for single pass printing and with a growing demand for pigment inks.

“Many of the inks need humectants to ensure that the printhead nozzles remain open, which then means the ink is more difficult to dry and the press slows down compared to its maximum rated speed,” he says. “Our technology means the inks do not need humectants in the same way, need less energy to dry; there is no slow down of the printing process. That is a real value propo-sition,” Mills says. “Now pigment inks are coming for textiles and that also suits our strengths.”

THIS IS UNDERWAY ALONGSIDE developments in aqueous ink printing. Xaar has a printhead running with a water based ink in its R&D department having notched more than 7,000 hours of operation. While this goes beyond proof of concept, it will be a while before a product emerges. Discus-sions on specifications, though interrupted by coronavirus, will be underway.

It has also worked out a way of firing three chambers at the same time, raising the prospect of printheads running at 150Khz, more than three times the current speed and comfortably competitive with any other printhead.

The thin film experience has been harnessed to design an inkjet head capable of 1440dpi. This resolution is not needed outside some special uses says Mills, “600dpi is good enough for most applications”

The first of the ImagineX printheads have arrived with a roadmap for more introduc-tions in the next couple of years. Like its printheads, Xaar has continued to fire. In future it will not be chasing unicorns, but says Mills “We will be picking our own battles, choosing markets we have an advan-tage. Xaar has become relevant again.”

A new generation of printheads will bring Xaar up to speed with rivals.


XEROX DIGITAL SUPPLIER PROFILE

INKJET THE FUTURE FOR XEROXXerox�has�given�its�cutsheet�inkjet�press�the�ability�to�match�its�iGen�for�quality,�giving�customers�a�choice�of�which�way�to�go.

XEROX EARNED THE DISTINCTION of being the first major company to pull out of the rescheduled Drupa, saying that a show in 2021 would not fit with the time-table for introducing new products. These had been developed to be launched this year, and so six months after Drupa ought to have opened, Xerox took to the internet to make the announcements.

The event, far better than a simple Zoom or Teams, attracted an audience in the region of 1,500 from around the world and was engaging enough for one of the present-ers to welcome the viewers declaring “It’s nice to be here”. But where? Compared to gathering around machines in the vastness of Hall 8 at the Messe in Dusseldorf this was all a bit surreal, a feeling heightened by the use of computer generated backgrounds. Such is 2020.

THE PRODUCTS, HOWEVER, ARE very real, led by the addition of a further drying module to its Baltoro cut sheet inkjet press, guaranteeing that the press can cope with higher ink coverage on coated papers.

The move should bring quality to an equal footing with Canon’s VarioPrint inkjet presses and will also address a segment that Xerox has addressed with the iGen family. However, the iGen5 offers a fifth colour option while the Baltoro remains a four-colour only machine, though able to print on 300gsm gloss coated media in the Colour Accelerator package. The iGen is very much the mature technology that has gone as far as it can: despite the Xerox heritage, inkjet is the future.

When Xerox introduced the Baltoro last year it promised that this was the first in a portfolio of machines. That configuration, with seven IR lamps in the drying section, remains available. It has been popular in mail and transactional print applications

with UK users including Bakergoodchild and Eight Days A Week, where the require-ment has been to print on uncoated sheets with limited ink coverage where the cost of inkjet offers an advantage over toner.

THE SECOND MEMBER OF THE family adds a further seven IR lamps to dry the HF inks and a cooling unit to return the paper to its original state before printing on the reverse side or finishing. An inline quality scanner ensures that nozzle outages are compensated for and any colour adjustment takes place on the fly.

Xerox argues that its complete control over the sheet transport, the printheads, inks and software, leads to a rock solid solu-tion without having to compromise on any aspect that can affect quality.

Micro purging while printing helps in this regard and offers an ink saving over the regular inkjet head purge routines that are generally needed. Anti aliasing routines and precision dot placement technology are also involved in delivering predictable quality.

The HF ink carries its own means of protecting the pigment from ingress into the paper surface while optimising the surface of the substrate to provide the colour quality required at 1200dpi resolution. This results in a machine that can print on 300gsm gloss coated media using ink optimisation algo-rithms to adjust ink coverage for maximum quality or for most economic cost.

XEROX ALSO POINTS TO THE foot-print of the new model (almost identical to an iGen5), the lack of a priming fluid and lower energy requirement as features that will help maintain market leadership in cutsheet inkjet while tackling jobs that have been printed on litho presses. “It’s not about being better than offset, not about being better than toner,” says Chris Irick,

worldwide product marketing manager. “It’s about equivalence.”

While this is the flagship announcement, it is not alone. The Iridesse gains a fluores-cent pink option and a long sheet feeder to cope with a banner length sheet to 1,200mm long. The new toner will act as a high impact spot colour, but will also provide extra vibrancy to other colours in the red part of the colour wheel.

THE COLOURLINK C8000W is a new entry level printer, that offers a white toner comparable in market positioning to OKI’s five colour machines. The Nuvera mono press gains MICR printing at 157ppm for printing cheque and other machine readable documents. A twin engine version takes maximum throughput to 314ppm.

There are new Versant models, the 280 and 4100, which advance the 180 and 3100 machines with extra capabilities in terms of handling paper to 400gsm and automated set up.

Profiles for different substrates will be downloadable from the cloud after scanning a bar code on the paper and users will be able to crowdsource profiles that other users have created. It is reckoned to save 30 minutes when switching to a new stock.

This will result in all machines delivering identical quality, which may have conse-quences for those marketing their quality as better than others.

The company is also stepping up its business support programmes. Under the Genesis Initiative it has put together material to educate designers in the use of CMYK+ colours and value added effects.

Various surveys have found a latent demand for added value print. But there is a knowledge gap between what the technol-ogy can deliver and the understanding from specifiers. n

Comprising board grooving, corner cutting, gluing, edge and corner taping andbox wrapping. Top quality, accurate boxes can be made to precise dimensionsfor confectionary, perfumes and spirits, photobooks, exclusive propertydevelopment prospectuses, artbooks and a wide variety of high-value and luxuryproducts – including jewellery.

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HORIZON FINISHING SUPPLIER PROFILE

Comprising board grooving, corner cutting, gluing, edge and corner taping andbox wrapping. Top quality, accurate boxes can be made to precise dimensionsfor confectionary, perfumes and spirits, photobooks, exclusive propertydevelopment prospectuses, artbooks and a wide variety of high-value and luxuryproducts – including jewellery.

Our newly extended range now produces finished boxes from 80 x 65 x 10 mmto 450 x 380 x 100 mm

on-demand or at speeds up to 1,200 per hour

The ultimate solution for:

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luxury box production

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specified by design prototyping software in real time

Corner Taping

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PBS BoxMaking Ad A4 Aug 2020_Layout 1 10/08/2020 16:16 Page 1

HORIZON TECHNOLOGY STRETCHES OUTAutomation and integration are the twin drivers of the developments that Horizon showed off at its most recent Smart Factory open house.UK PRINTERS ARE SHOWING an increasing interest in automated print and finishing technology, judging by interest in the Horizon Smart Factory open house event.

This put 22 different production cells through their paces over a week of demon-strations streamed online with viewers from the UK out numbering printers from any other country in Europe, despite the English language presentations taking place at 7am.

The presentations covered the gamut of technologies that are already part of the portfolio, products that are new to market and would have been introduced at Drupa as well as concepts for full hands off produc-tion using robots to move work around. While these are not likely to see the light of day outside Japan perhaps, for some time, they are an indication of where printers might need to go if skills shortages persist, if recruitment becomes more challenging and if it becomes necessary to restrict the number of staff working in a finishing department because of Covid or other pandemic causing disease.

THE PRODUCTS IN THE SPOTLIGHT included a fully automated cross folder, the AFV566 FKT, which takes the already fast changeover AFC version to the next level. The operator has no need for any manual intervention, not even to set roller gaps. Everything is controlled through a touch screen and data downloaded from Horizon’s ICE cloud production control network. Setting the B2 folder for the next job is a matter of pressing a handful of icons and the yes/no button.

It becomes 20% faster at job changeover than the previous machine, accumulating

into a substantial saving when coping with hundreds of short run jobs in a day.

This is the result of a machine learning system based on known fold patterns and set ups. There is potential to increase the accu-racy by mining the big data accumulated as the population of these machines linked to the cloud increases.

It will also automatically run at the ideal speed for any fold set up and paper, says IFS UK technical director Jason Seaber, elimi-nating variation between operators that err on the cautious side and those that are more confident. The first folders will ship from Japan next month.

A SECOND NEW FOLDER MOVES the small format folder from a maximum of six buckle plates to eight, giving it the ability to fold a sheet into 96pp pages to increase its appeal for short run pharmaceutical folding work.

Horizon also showcased the StitchLiner MkV, a new machine that extends the capa-bilities of the portfolio rather than replacing the very popular StitchLiner MkIII. The new model is aimed at continuous feed inkjet printing with a Hunkeler unwind unit feeding into a sheeter. The bridge unit, derived from the feed table of a folder, is capable of a wide range of stocks at high speed, takes each sheet through a scoring wheel, via a plow fold to accumulate the folded sheets on a saddle. When filled the book is moved forward, a cover added if necessary and it is stitched and trimmed in the normal way.

In the StitchLiner MkIII the sheets are accumulated before scoring and folding, but this is fed from either a digital sheet feeder or collator bins. The MkV is entirely digital. It is capable of producing variable pagina-

tion products on the fly and, thanks to the verification possible through five inspection cameras, to produce personalised booklets. Barcodes are used to ensure the cover is a correct match for the book, for example.

On the perfect binding side, Horizon had already announced the BQ500 earlier this year. It has now revealed details of the automatic book block feeding for this and for end papering and gauzing units that can run either inline with the binder or as stand alone units and so taking Horizon into case binding territory. One of the demonstrations planned for Drupa had been a line linking a Meccat-echnica sewing line, delivering sections to the binder to produce a finished book to block ready for casing in.

The BQ500 will also cope with loose sheet blocks. During the Open House the demon-stration featured the binder inline to two cut sheet digital presses and then to an HT300 three-side trimmer.

The other new product on display was the the RDN 4055 rotary die cutter. This has a new separator unit and, if required, a stacking unit at the end to allow one opera-tor to feed, run and unload the unit. The system will now take a minimum of a 50mm product, allowing a business card set to be imposed 36 up on a sheet rather than 30 up. It is a 20% gain, resulting in the need for seven rather than nine sheets for a 250 busi-ness card batch.

An automatic guided vehicle was a glimpse into the future. It removed stacks from the delivery of an RMGT press and delivered this into a folder for online production of booklets without any operator involvement. Few will be chasing this particular set up, but Horizon’s other introductions will be heading this way in the new year.


FINISHING SUPPLIER PROFILE RENZ

RENZ RINGS RENZ RINGS THE CHANGESTHE CHANGESIN A TIMELY CHANGE, RENZ (UK) HAS TAKEN ON A THIRD PARTY LOGISTICS (3PL) PROVIDER TO LOOK AFTER ITS STOCK OF WIRES, MACHINES AND ASSOCIATED BINDING PRODUCTS, SAVING MONEY AND CONSIDERABLE RESOURCES FOR THE WIRE BINDING SUPPLIER.

IT IS NOT UNUSUAL FOR A START UP company to squeeze into serviced offices, nor to use third-party providers for every-thing that a growing business needs when it lacks the resources to provide them itself. It is less usual for a larger established business to decide that it is no longer cost effective to try to do everything itself.

However, this is a decision that Renz (UK) has taken for very sound business reasons. It makes sense to use competent outside service providers to streamline its operation.

Renz (UK) is the sales and distribution arm for the German manufacturer of wire binding technology, with a base of end users ranging from schools and offices to produc-tion printers producing calendars, diaries and more.

At one end it supplies cut lengths of ring wire binding in A4 and A5 lengths in a multi-tude of colours along with the machines to punch and bind on. At the other it supplies spools of ring wire in many different diam-eters and colours to printers and print finishers who wire bind books, pads, and calendars. Renz has a strong presence with the digital printers producing variable data, personalised calendars ordered via online platforms.

RENZ HAS ALWAYS FOCUSED mainly on the digital side of calendar production rather than supplying those producing thousands of stock calendars. This though has changed over the last couple of years with Renz making inroads into this part of the market where kilometre upon kilometre of standard wires are needed each year. The digital market while also having the same

large volume requirement is characterised by the use of different wire diameters and colours required by end clients.

Renz in short is not a company slashing costs in a declining market. But it is one that has a top heavy aspect to the business year. Around 50% of revenue comes in the last four months of the year, peak time for online calendar purchases, says managing director Iain Bullock. Renz has to gear up to cope with this peak and to carry the cost of this capacity during quieter months when it is not needed.

BULLOCK JOINED RENZ IN THE 1990s, initially on sales, rising to become its manag-ing director. “I first met Renz at Ipex in 1993, and at Drupa in 2004 I took over from my predecessor here. He had retired and I could see how to quickly take the business forwards.

“We doubled the space we had by taking on more buildings and from 2004/05 doubled the turnover with more staff, more buildings and more products into the UK.”

These buildings were at a former farm in the grounds of Hatfield House in Hertford-shire rented from the land and property arm of Gascoyne Cecil Estates. As it expanded, Renz racked these buildings to hold huge quantities of ring wire spools, boxes of cut wire and associated binding accessory products.

It also took on the UK distribution of Argos, a Belgian UV cold cure coating machine manufacturer and Bindomatic the Swedish producer of thermal binding machines and covers. It was a simple busi-ness model. Trucks came in weekly from

the German factory, itself in a rural loca-tion in the south of the country, pallets were offloaded, products removed from pallets where necessary and put away in bays or shelves. The consumables and machines were then shipped out again to customers around the UK.

SMALLER ORDERS OF CUT LENGTHS and binding accessories into the office prod-ucts sector are more complex with an order perhaps requiring a dozen boxes of blue A4 wire, 18 red A5 and some front and back covers. The next combination may be completely different and subsequent orders will also all be a different, unpredictable, mix. But this is what Renz does.

It was an order from an online distribu-tor of Renz office products that started to change Bullock’s thinking. “In 2016 one of our larger distributors into the office prod-ucts market switched their delivery location to Letchworth when their offices were in another part of the country,” he says. “And I wanted to know why.

“It turned out that they had started to use a third-party logistics company. I was intrigued. But I couldn’t contemplate handing over our stock for someone else to look after.”

HE WAS INTRIGUED ENOUGH, however, to investigate how third-party logistics worked. “I was visiting many companies that purported to be third-party logistics specialists. Most, in reality, turned out to be pallet carriers chancing their arm to increase pallet flows through their network but without any form of true 3PL ability and


RENZ FINISHING SUPPLIER PROFILE

no digital warehouse management system that could integrate with ours.” Renz would stay as it was.

The next year the idea floated again and Bullock started to talk with a logistics company in Letchworth aware that Renz might be able to negotiate a break in its lease in 2018 halfway through the five-year duration. “It was a logistics business that had grown from a pallet handler to become masters of 3PL and were not far from us in Hatfield,” he adds. “We talked and got a long way along the road.”

THE ROAD CAME TO A SUDDEN end when Gascoyne Cecil Estates decided it would not allow its tenant to break the contract. Renz would be staying put until July 2020 when its lease expired.

Having effectively been convinced that 3PL was the way to go, Bullock now had more breathing space for a deeper look around and more time to fine tune what might be a traumatic existential change. If Renz was not distributing its products, what sort of business was it?

The problem, he explains, is that it soon became apparent that this 3PL company, that he was a way down the road with, could not really cope with the multiple outer box products that needed to be broken down and sold as single units – “case breaks” in 3PL terminology.

However, this was necessary to handle the small orders. If Renz could not solve this problem, the whole project was off the table. The solution was to take a different approach. Instead of shipping to the UK and then sorting the small orders into a mixed

order, these orders could be made up in Germany and shipped by DPD directly to the end client. A 48-hour delivery contract was then signed with DPD Germany to enable this.

“THIS HAD BECOME POSSIBLE because of the growth of e-commerce and the expansion of both B2B and B2C deliv-ery fleets,” says Bullock. “This sorted that part of the requirement, but we also need to work out how to handle our ring wire spools that are packed 16 to a pallet. It made no sense and was not cost effective to ship these across Europe to fulfill specific orders. But it made sense and made it easier to use an established 3PL company in the UK. Once we were talking about pallets, the compa-nies we were speaking to became much more interested and appeared much more competent.”

ONCE THE PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUE of no longer being able to see and touch prod-ucts on its own premises had been overcome, Renz could look forward to substantial savings, in terms of both cost and the endless hassle of property management issues. There were contracts for broadband and telephone lines, waste collection, compres-sors, fire and burglar alarms, shutter door servicing, office cleaning, rodent control, gutter cleaning, window washing, the list went on and on. On top of this there was the rent, rates, buildings insurance, heating, and electricity to pay for.

And this is without the staff costs of looking after the stock, packaging require-ments and the need to have fork-lift trucks

serviced and trained on to move pallets, factors that add no value to the business. “These are all costs that I would lose perma-nently” says Bullock.

He still needed to be convinced that an outside service provider would look after the distribution of stock as well as Renz did itself though. Bullock was prepared to look in a broad radius, up as far as Huntingdon or Bedford perhaps. Likewise, Renz would need to find new offices, again looking for managed premises that would simplify administration, reduce costs, and leave the company free to focus on customers and sales.

“WE HAD ALMOST CHOSEN TO go with Regus, then found Cubix,” says Bullock. This was a privately owned serviced office provider taking the top two floors of a hotel on the fringe of Luton Airport. “With onsite parking, discounts at the bar, in the restaurants and for overnight stays I was very happy to move here,” he says. Instead of 1,150 m2 of space overall that needed to be looked after, Renz now fills two offices totalling just 32m2 with some staff now working permanently from their home offices set up during the first period of lockdown back in March.

There is no longer a showroom, but this was already vastly underused. Prospects prefer to see products at friendly custom-ers where they can see machines running and ask pertinent questions rather than watch potted demos. It has also lost the vast quantities of paper that the old method of working had generated. “We would print out each sales order, generate a pick list …

Iain Bullock carried out a thorough investigation of the options available when deciding to outsource its logistics operation.


FINISHING SUPPLIER PROFILE RENZ

for the warehouse, a delivery note then an invoice,” says Bullock. Each action gener-ated four or more sheets of paper for the many orders placed each day. All this had to be stored.

RENZ FILLED A LEVER ARCH FILE a day with this paperwork, itself needing to be kept somewhere. “This is the way we did things because this is the way things were done,” says Bullock.

Today that paper has been replaced by digital files created automatically on confir-mation of an order and sent digitally both to the accounts team, working remotely, the chosen 3PL provider via its warehouse management system or the German parent and at the right time, as a delivery note and invoice for the customer.

That 3PL company is Mini Clipper Logistics, a company that operates five warehouses in Leighton Buzzard, Luton, Dunstable, Houghton Regis and North-ampton and which is a specialist in this evolving field which has attracted a range of players, from companies that had been pallet hauliers to storage specialists and entrants that believe there is an opportu-nity to exploit.

Bullock spoke to and visited many potential partners and says he was not impressed by the sales reps he met during the process.

“WE FOUND THAT THERE WERE A lot of companies out there purporting to offer a full 3PL service but simply from the limited questions asked by the reps during initial meetings I was aware that they couldn’t possibly provide an accurate quotation as they simply weren’t asking for enough data in the first place,” he says.

Few had researched the Renz business, and few knew the necessary questions to ask. Mini Clipper at first seemed to be no excep-tion. Bullock’s opinion changed however when he visited the site in Dunstable which would manage the 400 plus pallets of stock that Renz has in the UK.

THERE WAS AN IMMEDIATE connec-tion with the site manager, clearly passionate about his job and running a clean, efficient operation. Bullock was confident that this was someone on the top of his game. Any concerns there might have been about a third party not caring about Renz products have disappeared.

Mini Clipper has its own software expert on the team who was able to integrate its warehouse management system with the Renz system. Bullock can track the move-

ment of stock into the warehouse, what is ordered, where it is and when it has been delivered. Provided each product is bar coded, it can be identified, looked after, and traced. Every cost that Renz now has, has a direct relationship with every order.

The new system also results in transpar-ency for Bullock. He is a great fan of the clarity of a well designed spreadsheet and has a price matrix for every pallet or box that arrives, is unloaded, placed into storage, picked, packed and dispatched.

Mini Clipper takes charge of manag-ing both parcel and pallet delivery to the end customer through DPD Local and the Palletline pallet network of which they are founder members.

Needless to say, there is a huge saving compared to running a full warehouse oper-ation in-house.

THERE HAVE BEEN MINOR changes: Renz takes longer now to supply bespoke lengths of cut wire to customers as it no longer has its UK converting facility. “Our customers now have to wait a few days longer for these bespoke lengths,” Bullock admits. But “such orders entailed addi-tional handling, labour and packaging costs which could not be recovered,” he says.

There has been a saving on personnel costs. Bullock says he was dreading the day in May the announcement would have to be made. But at that point Renz was suffering a steep decline in orders as the first lockdown bit.

Almost everyone was put on furlough except Bullock, one member of the accounts department and one member of the ware-house staff.

ORDERS PRACTICALLY CEASED, at least, at the start of the lockdown. Covid-19 therefore helped explain the need to trim costs and staff. Now only one of those made redundant is without a full-time job. The accounts team continues to work from home having never had a customer facing role and therefore having no need to work from the office.

Like many other companies Renz was able to redirect resources to produce PPE in its German factory at the beginning of the pandemic. As Renz already had a long-standing relationship with Amazon for distribution and fulfilment it was natural for the UK company to be the international conduit between manufacturer and the internet retailer.

Volumes have been strong, handled almost exclusively by Amazon and this new PPE business helped to close the gap in

sales caused by the decline of its traditional business especially into the office sector.

That all seems far away already. Now the system has settled in so well with Mini-Clipper, the logistics company is now prepared to take on the Renz “case break” products that initially both it and Renz had reservations about the ability to fulfil. This will be useful if there is disruption to the transport industry following Brexit.

AND BULLOCK IS VISIBLY relieved. The final part of move took place over the August Bank Holiday and there have been few glitches. The research and extensive planning over the last couple of years has been worthwhile, not least because Renz has saved hundreds of thousands from the bottom line but also because the transition has been smooth. Bullock no longer needs to touch his stock to know it will be safely looked after.

“It was scary at the start,” he says, “but what was there really to worry about?” n

…

Renz stock is now held in a warehouse in Dunstable operated by Mini Clipper Logistics.


INVESTMENT FINANCE

Fortune favours the braveThere are opportunities in print for investment and acquisitions for those companies that are willing to look for them and can back their own judgement.

THE NEW YEAR COULD BRING a flush of M&A activity across print as investment money has been built up over the last year and will be readily available for the right opportunity.

Paul Holohan, chief executive of Rich-mond Capital partners, says: “It may come as a surprise that there are more owners looking to buy businesses at present than there are sellers”. It means that owners have opportunities to sell their business, no matter how badly hit by the pandemic. “Just closing down is the worst thing any owner can do,” he says. “There is always some-thing of value that can be sold as an asset – even a sales book of £250,000.”

And if the government winds down the CBils scheme that has helped many busi-nesses stay alive during the pandemic, some kind of investment support will replace it, says Compass Business Finance. It has secured £15 million of block finances from British Business Investments which will help its customers underpin future investment, whether in equipment or M&A.

Mark Nelson, director of Compass Busi-ness Finance, says: “A number of companies have been able to get through the crisis because of the schemes that have been put in place. These are helping them to keep operating in some shape or form.” An appli-cation for CBils funding should be filed for any company planning investment the next 18 months.

THIS IS BECAUSE THERE IS A six-month period to draw down the loan after application and then once in place there is a 12 month grace period before any money needs to be repaid.

Mergers have taken place in the last year, notably that between Precision, Prime and ProCo, but also with Pureprint buying

Smudge and Paragon returning to the acqui-sition trail with Tod. Says Holohan: “When life returns to more normality, although I suspect permanently changed in many ways, we will hope that this positive approach to mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic alliances as an effective means of business development will continue and there is evidence this may be so.”

However, not all businesses are equally attractive. For Precision Proco, the deal was about market positioning, for Pureprint about expansion along its value chain and for Paragon, a further acquisition to add a further brick to its wall. Currently label and carton printers are in demand as these are considered growth opportunities for the funders.

This should appeal to commercial print companies aiming to break free from the commodity trap. They are perhaps better placed than outside funders when consid-ering which are the most attractive niche players. “Companies should do the research into the market and find out who the winners are and find out what it is that makes them special,” he says.

“Printers need to be more market focused, closer to customers and with a deep under-

standing of the market they are operating in. It’s the only way to be able to look forwards with confidence. If you are a production focused printer you will simply not make it.”

While the BPIF fears, pre the extension to furlough, that up to 5,000 employees in print might lose their jobs as a consequence of market shrinkage, representing some £2 billion of disappearing revenue, a greater fear will be that companies lack the confi-dence to invest as uncertainty over Covid gives way to uncertainty about the medium term impact of Brexit. This is why govern-ment support in the form of CBils has been so important, says Nelson.

“The word is getting out there that you do not have to have been negatively affected by the lockdowns to apply as we have seen a change in why companies are making appli-cations. At first it was about cash to keep the business running, now it’s about invest-ment either now, into 2021 or beyond. The government recognises that investment is important for the economy,” he says.

“THE COMMITMENT FROM BRITISH Business Investments, will enable us to meet the growing demand for funding in our markets, including the provision of CBils and other asset based finance. Having the ability to support our customers and main-tain our high service levels is paramount, and this partnership gives us the confidence to know that we can continue provide that.”

Holohan cautions that print businesses hoping to take advantage of acquisition opportunities should move sooner rather than later. There is no point waiting until the market recovers later in 2021, for example, he says. “There is definitely a more upbeat mood for next year, but printers are not like a fine wine – they do not improve with age,” he says. n

Paul Holohan says that the opportunities are out there.


CLASSIC PRESSES HEIDELBERG SPEEDMASTER 102

HEIDELBERG’S HEIDELBERG’S LONG LONG PERFECTOR PERFECTOR IS FIRST IS FIRST PRESS OF THE PRESS OF THE INDUSTRIAL INDUSTRIAL PRINT AGEPRINT AGETHE SPEEDMASTER 102-8P RECEIVED A MODEST LAUNCH BUT HAS RAPIDLY EARNED ITS PLACE AS ONE OF THE MOST PRODUCTIVE PRINTING PLATFORMS IN THE WORLD, SETTING NEW BARRIERS FOR PRODUCTIVITY AND SETTING A COURSE THAT OTHERS HAVE FOLLOWED.

The XL106-8P is the natural successor to the first long perfectors.


HEIDELBERG SPEEDMASTER 102 CLASSIC PRESSES

IF THE INDIGO E1000 WAS THE MOST important press at Ipex 93, the Heidelberg Speedmaster 102-8P was not far behind. The first was the harbinger of the digital printing age, the second began the age of high productivity industrialised litho printing.

The Heidelberg press was the first sheetfed press to print in four-colour on both sides of the sheet in a single pass. There had been perfectors before: book printers had used Crabtree Sovereigns for decades, but mono only. Heidelberg itself had offered 1/1, 2/2 and 4/1 convertible two-, four- and five-unit machines. Until 1992. In November that year, Heidelberg unveiled a press that there seemed to be no market for. Nobody was clamouring for a full colour long perfecting press. No doubt the company had tested the market, but not to the extent it would these days.

It was a launch that was modest by Heidelberg’s standards. There had been an extravaganza for the introduction of the SM74, the Quickmaster too was worthy of an international press conference. But at the time the Speedmaster 102-8P arrived almost unannounced. In the chronology of land-mark events listed on Heidelberg’s website, the arrival of direct imaging technology is highlighted in 1991 followed in 1995 by the Quickmaster DI and SM52. Only the latter remains available, but has largely been outpaced by digital presses, while the SX102-8P marries the same press configura-tion as the 1992 machine with the latest press control software.

HEIDELBERG WAS SYNONYMOUS with high quality litho printing. Companies aspired to own and operate a Heidelberg and buyers might prefer a company that operated a Speedmaster over a machine from another supplier (it was a halcyon time). The long perfecting specification seemed to change that: there would surely be a difference in quality between either side of the sheet, let alone issues around registration and fit and the amount of waste at a makeready.

The press was so much longer than usual that some early adopters had a bicycle parked alongside the machine. Others fitted a buzzer or bell system so that the No1 at the delivery could alert the operator at the feeder and vice versa. Heidelberg eventually installed an intercom for this purpose, the first sheetfed press to have one.

At the time Heidelberg had a dominant position in commercial printing, having grown with its customers from GTOs, through SO, MO and then Speedmaster presses. Few, however, wanted to go into web offset print-ing, at least not with Heidelberg Web8 and Web16 presses. Nor was the Speedmaster 102 suited to carton printing: unlike the Komori Lithrone or Manroland 600 and 700 machines. These machines had double circumference transfer cylinders and were starting to attract the attention of some commercial printers, Heidelberg’s natural market.

Sheet transfer through a double circum-ference machine is smoother than on the Speedmaster, but these could not print on both sides of a sheet in a single pass. Extending the Speedmaster 102 portfolio like this was a good tactic. At that point, nobody predicted the success that the long perfector format would become.

This was a long way off when the press was unveiled. I had seen it a few months earlier when Heidelberg’s head of marketing

had opened an unmarked door in Heidel-berg’s head office. The press was in an unadorned room. It was an impressive sight, but who would buy it?

THE FIRST IN THE UK WENT TO Cambridge University Press, the second to Westerham Press. In Germany, presses were printing car brochures, demonstrat-ing an ability to handle high quality work. There was, however, a discernible differ-ence in quality between top and bottom sides. Printers quickly learned to print the lighter coverage on the top sheet to minimise marking on the second side through. And as has been a tradition in the UK, printers with a long perfector were quick to pass on the productivity enhancing benefits of these machines by cutting prices.

Heidelberg’s timing was good. Auto-mated, or rather assisted, plate changing was not widespread, but essential for a press where eight, and later ten and 12 plates, might need to be lifted and replaced. And computer to plate imaging was just around the corner. There is a lot of focus on the importance of CTP in shifting printing from skills based trade to a proper industry. The long perfecting press was equally as important.

Heidelberg’s Gernot Keller, today busi-ness intelligence manager in head office, …


CLASSIC PRESSES HEIDELBERG SPEEDMASTER 102

says: “When you put the press together with CTP and plate changing, the long perfecting format suddenly made sense. When we first announced it, print quality was the main concern of most printers. It took us until almost 2000 to add PerfectJack-ets to repel the ink and resulting in making it hard to distinguish between front and back. That was an important step forwards.”

Later the addition of Super Blue trans-fer jackets was important to help in printing thinner papers which needed more guid-ance through the press. The engineers had tackled sheet travel issues from the outset, something that even today on the current SX102, is not always fully appreciated, says Keller.

“Some of the chief developments were in the delivery, where Heidelberg was the first to use venturi air nozzles to avoid contact between the freshly printed sheet and the guide plate to create an air cushion and help move paper through the press into the deliv-ery. This is an important development to make scratch free perfected printing possi-ble,” says Keller.

THE SHAPE OF THE DELIVERY gripper was adjusted to manage airflows to minimise problems in handling what could be a very wet sheet. It was designed in the same way that a bridge is designed to with-stand high winds by allowing the air to flow through. In the delivery of the press, the aim was to create a laminar airflow to help guide the sheet into the delivery.

This was followed by a double sided spray unit, Exatronic Duo Plus in 1998. At first it was thought that a single application of spray powder would be enough to prevent blocking in the stack, but after some field experience it was realised that applying some spray to either side of the sheet helps separate the sheets for feeding in the next production process. “It was very much appreciated,” says Keller.

It was a feature that became standard on the XL105 and the CD102. Likewise, these have additional sheet guide plates between print units that was first seen on the long perfector.

“It meant that the XL105 could run thinner stocks from the beginning,” he adds. And that expertise continues with the new market for labels, both glued and in mould as well as being adopted by other providers targeted by the XL106.

The introduction of the ten-colour version in 1996 and the 12-colour version three years later allowed printers to print a special colour and a coating. This proved more problematic than expected and few

printers persevered with coatings on both sides of the sheet. The 12-colour version proved especially popular in the UK where the idea was to double up on the flexibility of a five- or six-colour press, though this format has since fallen out of favour. It is not unknown for dealers with a 12-colour on their books to remove two or four units to make the press more attractive to buyers.

CUTSTAR REEL HANDLING, however, proved another huge advantage for UK printers in particular, where the price differ-ential between reels and sheets is greater than elsewhere in Europe. The UK became the largest market in world with this config-uration, followed by Poland, Germany and Japan. Heidelberg has sold 400, almost all in B1 formats, since introducing this at Drupa 2000.

CutStar printers in the UK were able to compete for longer runs without having to take the step into the web offset world. Add in ink pumping systems to replace ink application into the ducts or the Technotrans Inkline systems that had alleviated this issue, and another piece of the industrial printing

jigsaw falls into place. Perhaps the final piece was the introduction of Inpress Control. This will provide a spectrophotometric assessment of the sheet both before the perfecting drum and ahead of the delivery.

Heidelberg unveiled the technology in 2006, introducing it on the CD74 before it moved to the larger format press. For the first time it gave the operator a view over the entire job from the console without having to pull the sheet. Keller says: “It means that the operator can see that he is producing good sheets within the set tolerances.” The first installation on a perfecting Speedmaster 102 in the UK came in May 2010.

THE FIRST STAGE IN THE industri-alisation of the printing industry had been completed. Keller continues: “We were so proud when we sold the 3,000th long perfec-tor, though since then nobody has really bothered to keep count (the company has produced more than 4,500 long perfecting presses, it says). The SM102-8P revolution-ised the printing industry. Quite simply, you cannot produce more economically than you can with a long perfector.” n

THERE ARE STILL NUMEROUS SM102-Ps in operation around the world, including in this country. While advances in makeready automation have made straight presses a more popular choice recently, there is still a place for the long perfector.

In the UK, one of the most fervent adherents is Sinatra Marketing Services in Rayleigh, where director Gary Knight operates a preowned example.

“It’s amazing how productive they really are,” he says. “We are able to print 30 million impressions on the press, have notched more than 60 million since we started two-and-a-

half years ago and it’s a 14-year-old press.”

Heidelberg’s average impression count for its latest Push to Stop machines is around 27 million impressions a year, highlighting how effective the veteran machine can be.

The company has built up from a single shift to fill six days and four nights. And it will run the press at 12,000sph.

“It has its limitations, and a lot of ideas fed into the XL105, but even on this press we have been perfecting with 300gsm material. I couldn’t have wished for better service from a machine.”

LONG PERFECTORS STILL PROLIFERATE

…

CutStars made the perfecting press more productive.


INFORMATION/TECHNOLOGY LARGE FORMAT

SwissQPrint brings finger tip control to bedsSWISSQPRINT HAS extended a technology introduced on the Karibu, its first roll to roll printer, to its portfolio of three flatbed machines, Oryx, Nyala and Impala.

The Tip Switch vacuum technology eliminates the need to mask or tape non print areas to prevent problems caused by vacuum pressure needed to hold substrates in place.

The Tip Switch system uses 256 segments across the width of the table. Activating or switching a channel off is a finger tip action, like adjusting the ink zone from the control desk of a litho press.

This applies the vacuum where it is needed without for further manual intervention by the operator. The power of the vacuum pressure applied is equally adjustable.

In tandem operation the Tip

Switch system can be applied to the front and rear parts of the table independently of each other.

It will work equally well when printing two rolls of substrate on the same flatbed printer, holding the material in place without covering the entire area which can create turbulence and affect the ink flow.

The system will also switch to blowing air, enabling faster posi-

tioning of a board to be printed by floating it into position, particularly useful when dealing with heavy boards.

During operation the user will run a finger across the array, like sliding a finger across a piano keyboard, to apply vacuum in all areas and then will shut off those zones that fall under areas where there is no substrate.

This ensures that there is no

loss of vacuum through leakage around unmasked areas.

While the technology cannot be retrofitted to machines already in the field, it will be fitted as standard to future installations.

At the same time the company has started to market rebuilt machines, mostly those acquired as part of a trade in for a new machine. UK manag-ing director Erskine Stewart says: “A preowned system still remains a durable, long term investment and a preowned Impala represents a formida-ble investment and great value for money. Furthermore, all preowned systems are fully guaranteed and are covered by the same service warranties as a brand new system, so in terms of cost and performance, the return on investment is quite remarkable.”

Global secures large format dealsGLOBAL GRAPHICS will supply its Harlequin Rip tech-nology as a core component for Mimaki’s RasterLink 7 Rip. This will be rolled out across the range of Mimaki printers, including its newly announced JV100 160 and UJV100 160.

This is a 1.6m wide roll to roll printer that is capable of up to 23m2/hr for banners and signage applications. It has LED curing and a new inkjet, including a high opacity white and prints to a wide range of materials, including films.

Mimaki’s choice of Harle-quin as the core PDF processor in the new Rip follows hard on the heels of Mutoh announcing

that the same technology will be part of its VerteLith Rip. This is available immediately on UV machines and is scheduled to become available on eco solvent machines.

The deal with Mutoh also includes the Opal advanced inkjet screens function to opti-mise screen algorithms for inkjet. The VerteLith Rip will also include a feature for flatbed UV printing to enable printing to objects held in a jig for gifting and personalisation.

The Mimaki RasterLink 7 Rip will highlight functionality for variable data printing, with opportunities in direct to textile and dye sublimation printing. It will also accelerate the Ripping process.

Satoshi Kaneko, general manager of the Mimaki Engineering software design

department, says: “There are significant quality improve-ments too; PDF transparency processes correctly and we have found that the expression of thin lines is improved.”

The company expects to ship more than 10,000 examples of the Rip in the next year.

Delt turns to LatexDELT SHARED SERVICE, Plymouth, has invested in an HP Latex 560 printer supported by Graphtec cutter and easy mount laminator. All were supplied by CMYUK.

The business is a shared ownership enterprise, part owned by Plymouth City Council and the Devon Clini-cal Commissioning Group. The new large format capability adds

to a print and mail service that handled 1 million mailed items last year.

Now it will be able to meet demand for posters and signage that previously needed to be outsourced. The organisation reckons it will save £170,000 over a five-year period. Delt will make a saving on the amount spent on outside services, including large format print amounting up to £100,000 a year.

The choice of the Latex printer enables it to produce material for both indoor and outdoor use. In a normal year Delt would be producing graphics for outdoor events with the 400th anniversary of the departure of the Mayflower anticipated as the key event in 2020, but was badly hit by Covid. n

Time to load beds is slashed though the use of TipSwitch to control vacuum settings.


OUTSOURCING TRADE SERVICES

Solopress pitches bespoke offer for trade buyersSOLOPRESS HAS expanded its online trade printing service to deliver a more bespoke offer-ing for high volume professional print purchasers, whether resellers, print management or other printers.

The Solopro service is a package that can be tailored to individual clients, including discounted prices compared to those available through the public face of its website. The move is in response to awareness that trade customers with estab-lished relationships with their customers were not able to make a margin on these products. And as many smaller printers have reduced their production capac-ity during lockdowns, perhaps turning off their litho presses, there is growing interest in using trade printers.

At the same time volumes of standard business cards orders, flyers to advertise restaurants and the like have dwindled

because these sectors have been forced to close.

“That has had a massive impact on our sales,” says managing director Simon Cooper. “We need a vibrant economy and then we will see the revenue flow back.” Not all printers will survive until that point and if they do, not all will be inclined to return to the pre lockdown capacity. “As demand does pick up, we are an efficient

resource for them,” he says. The result has been Solopro to cater for these companies. At the same time the company has installed the HP T250 HD inkjet web press, upgraded its HP Indigo cut sheet presses and updated its workflow. This has allowed the company to intro-duce differential pricing.

“This would have been challenging under normal circumstances – it has been easier when we have not been full to the gunnels,” he says. “We felt that this was the time to offer a way to make sure we were providing a tailored service to resellers and printers. Previ-ously there hadn’t been any differentiation in the way we looked after customers. Now Solopro customers get access to a dedicated team of our most experienced account handlers who really understand the print-ing process and can provide the kind of support that profes-

sional customers would expect to find.” Applicants will be vetted to ensure they have the credentials and volumes that Solopress is looking for and to ensure that these companies are financially sound as for the first time the company is prepared to offer credit terms.

“We will always make sure that work for these customers is prioritised through production to ensure that if there are any times when work is running late, we are looking after our biggest customers,” says Cooper.

The pricing will be differ-ent for different customers says Cooper, reflecting an apprecia-tion that these customers need to make a margin. “We want to take discussions about price off the table. This is about understanding the pricing they are getting at the moment and working with that. This is a far more consultative approach,” he explains.

Saxoprint makes delivery cutsSAXOPRINT HAS CUT deliv-ery times to the UK without levying extra charges for print-ers and buyers wanting the four-day service.

The change covers print, cut and fold products, business cards, leaflets, posters and the

like. It follows on from confir-mation than the Dresden factory has commissioned the first HP Indigo 100K press, a year after the machine was delivered as a beta machine.

This increases capacity to take on shorter runs and to become more flexible in production, balancing litho and digital print-ing in an integrated workflow. This has enabled the company to pass on the benefits by cutting standard delivery times from six to four days.

Precision Proco fills helping handJUST DAYS AFTER announc-ing ‘Print out to help out’ as an initiative to give underused printers a temporary job, Pure-

print Proco had collected close to 100 CVs. The scheme is intended to help keep Precision Proco’s sites in full operation over the peak season from now until the new year, while giving an opportunity to skilled print-ers who have been furloughed by their employers. It is simple to staff up with unskilled bench hands, but finding experienced guillotine operators or those capable of running an Indigo Series 3 or Series 4 press is more challenging.

The intention is to create pool of available people that are available from next week, 15 November until 15 January, that are able to fill gaps in the teams at Dagenham, Sheffield and South Normanton sites. These could occur either through contracting the Covid-19 virus,

or more likely because they have come in contact with those who have been infected and so must isolate for two weeks.

The business is also expecting bumper demand for personal-ised print products this year. “Because families may not be able to be together at Christ-mas, we anticipate that there will be more orders than ever for personalised items such as photobooks and calendars,” he says.

“We have 350 staff and if just 5% of them become infected, or someone in their household becomes infected, we lose them for two weeks without any notice – and that can cause us difficul-ties. Normally if someone has a cold, they will be off for one or two days. We can cope with a normal attrition rate like that.” n

Simon Cooper says that many commercial printers have reduced capacity and will use trade suppliers.

Installation of an Indigo 100K has enabled Saxoprint to cut delivery times.


INFORMATION/TECHNOLOGY SUSTAINABILITY

Sylvicta aims to answer sustainability callARJOWIGGINS IS intro-ducing a fully recyclable, compostable, marine degradable alternative to plastic for use in packaging, including flow lines and pouches.

Sylvicta is a translucent functional barrier paper that has been tested on food and cosmetics and has performed as effectively as more conventional plastics in these applications.

The company calls this a “ground breaking new sustain-able alternative to plastics in packaging.”

A critical performance factor is its high barrier to oxygen, one of the key issues in reducing shelf life of perishable foods. It will be useful in transportation before purchase and in the home

after purchase. The material is also an effective barrier against aromas, mineral oils and fatty foodstuffs.

It can be printed by any analogue process, foiled, metab-olised and coated with heat and cold sealable materials as well as being glued to finish the pack. Applications include packag-ing for snack foods, pet food

sacks, energy and chocolate bar flow lines and butter and spread packaging.

After use the material is straightforward to recycle and will potentially become the next generation of Sylvicta material.

“Despite the ongoing move-ment towards more sustainable packaging solutions, plastics still remain a popular choice,

largely for practical reasons. Until now, most of the exist-ing offers are mainly single-use packaging, using unrecyclable, multi-layered laminates incor-porating plastics or aluminium foil” explains Christophe Jordan, managing director of the Translucent Papers division at ArjoWiggins.

“With Sylvicta, such solu-tions can be turned into fully recyclable, compostable and biodegradable paper packaging. The product is simply revolu-tionary - it can help to create the circular economy society we all desire.”

The paper is produced at the Chartham Mill near Canterbury, Kent, the county with Invicta as its part of its insignia.

St Austell Printing Company joins carbon balancedST AUSTELL PRINTING Company has joined the handful of UK printers that have achieved ‘carbon balanced printer’ status.

The certification is proof that the company has offset its entire carbon footprint through the World Land Trust. This protects high value conservation land in a number of forests around the world which would otherwise be vulnerable to logging and forest clearance.

In this case the contribution from SAPC will safeguard 26 acres in Khe Nuoc Trong forest, a lowland forest and home to endangered species in Vietnam. The commitment continues a sustainability policy that has been in place with the move to purpose built premises above the Cornish town in 2013.

This was built to a high envi-ronmental specification with solar panels and rainwater harvesting and an investment policy that has focused on the environmental footprint of equipment it buys.

“We are firm believers in the environmental credentials of print and paper, and this latest investment enables us to broaden our commitment to sustainability,” says managing director Peter Moody.

“It’s not just about us – this now enables our clients to demonstrate their environ-

mental credentials. By using St Austell Printing Company as their printing partner, combined with a carbon balanced paper option, the print can carry a ‘carbon balanced print’ certi-fication. This shows that the carbon from the production of their entire publication has been offset. No matter how big or small the project.”

Trees campaign from ProCartonProCarton lent its support to The Tree Council’s National

Tree Week at the end of November. The support lines up with its own ‘Trees into cartons, cartons into trees’ at home initiative to highlight the sustainability of fibre based packaging. ProCarton says its programme, encourag-ing parents to plant a sapling, supplied in a biodegradable carton, at home to compensate for the cancellation of commu-nity tree planting initiatives which have been cancelled due to the second national lockdown.

Tony Hitchin, general manager of ProCarton, says: “It is unfortunate that some areas in the UK may not be able to take part in community plant-ings due local lockdowns, so we hope TICCIT at Home will help to continue this important work. It makes for a great activity for families to complete together as they can make a direct positive difference and learn all about the important role that trees, pack-aging and recycling play in the protection of our planet.” n

Sylvicta can replace plastic film in standard packaging applications with the same barrier properties that polymer film offers.

St Austell Printing Company has fitted solar panels to its roof.


COVER STORY PROFILEPAPER INFORMATION/TECHNOLOGY

Held in stock for next day delivery(Denmaur Paper Media is BRC Storage and Distribution certifi ed)

For further information, please contact your local sales offi ce or visit: www.denmaur.com/revive

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High quality greyboard products including black and white lined

Suitable for a variety of packaging and manufacturing applications

A wide range of weights available from stock for immediate delivery

Made from FSC® Recycled certifi ed post consumer waste pulp

Carbon Balanced - enabling use of logo and end user certifi cate

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12 12

COMMUNICATE SUSTAINABLY

Greyboard

Greyboard

Paper shuffles to replace loss of LumiMIDDLETON PAPER IS hoping to fill a gap left by the closure of StoraEnso’s conver-sion facility in Mendlesham. This has followed the with-drawal of the Lumi grade, the largest casualty in the declining demand for woodfree coated papers, and the conversion of the Oulu mill to packaging grades.

The Walsall company oper-ates three passband sheeters, which are used to convert reels to bespoke sizes for its Vision Paper merchanting arm, includ-ing the grades sold under the merchant brand as Quartz. This includes a triple coated gloss and silk grades that are produced at Burgo’s Ardennes mill.

Managing director Jason Middleton says: “We have been working with Burgo for over 20 years and are pleased to be able to promote our Quartz range as a viable, permanent alternative to Lumi.

“As we hold extensive stocks of cutter reels in our warehouse in Walsall, we are ideally placed to offer bespoke sizes to print-ers with faster turnaround times

than can be achieved by paper mills from outside the UK.”

It is not the only company hoping to fill the void as Lumi vanishes. UPM, for example, has invested in a fourth sheeting line for its Kymi paper mill.

Matti Laaksonen, general manager of the Kymi and Kaukas Paper Mills, says: “Investing in new equipment shows that fine paper produc-tion remains an important part of UPM’s operations. The sheeter will help us strengthen our position on the market and step up our production of graphic paper sheets.

“It will also help us optimise production between UPM Kymi

in Finland and UPM Nordland Papier in Germany.”

UPM argues that the addi-tional sheeter delivers the flexibility to respond to a requirement for fast and reliable services. The new line includes an automated folio sheeter, conveyors and packaging and is now in full production.

Another factor that needs consideration, Middleton says, is the impact that Brexit may have on UK ports. Merchants have made provision for conti-nuity of supply to overcome any uncertainty.

Sales manager Simon Cart-wright says that this too is an opportunity for the

sheet conversion and supply operation.

“There have been so many changes to supply recently that it can be difficult to keep up: paper mills reducing capacity and switching production to other grades may make viable sense to them, but it can leave printers stuck, especially when they have become accustomed to a certain paper or service level.

“We don’t know what the future holds, and there is now fear of lengthy delays at UK ports from January 2021; our extensive UK stock of cutter reels ready for sheeting ensures we are prepared for any eventuality.”

Sappi looks forward to 2021 pick upANY RECOVERY IN volumes of graphic papers has been slowed by further lockdowns around Europe, says Sappi in its 2020 full year results.

During the year the paper-maker took downtime, reducing production by 1.1 million tonnes across its product range, some-thing that also reduced the build up of unsold inventory. CEO Steve Binnie says: “The third quarter saw the full impact of Covid-19 before the recovery being in the fourth quarter.”

Demand for graphic paper was at its lowest in the May/June period across Europe and North America, with a slow pick up through to the end of the finan-cial year in September. The fourth quarter saw downtime of 321,000 tonnes, which was less than in its Q3.

However, the company warns that the second wave of Covid infection and subse-quent lockdowns in Europe will hit demand in the company’s first quarter. Nevertheless the underlying performance of the business will continue to improve, it says. Operating rates will improve in the coming year

thanks to machine closures that other paper making businesses are implementing.

The cumulative impact is that Sappi reported a $135 million loss for the year, compared to a $211 million profit for 2019.

Stoneywood hit by pandemicARJOWIGGINS SAYS THAT demand for products made at its Stoneywood mill near Aberdeen will not fully recover after the pandemic, leading to redundan-cies at the site.

The company expects to curtail 70 jobs from a workforce

of 400 because of the torrid time it has experienced during the lockdowns and the switch to work from home, limitations on social occasions and busi-ness meetings, which have hit demand for its papers.

Jonathan Mitchell, CEO of Arjowiggins in Scotland, says: “Although we expect to see some recovery next year we do not anticipate a full return to pre Covid conditions and our pre Covid plans.”

The mill had been forced into an extended maintenance break after rulings in Scotland that non essential businesses should close during the first lockdown. n

Sheeter at Middleton Paper has the capacity to convert bespoke sizes for UK printers and fill Lumi’s shoes.

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PEOPLE WHO, WHAT AND WHERE

Young steps up to lead Bluetree printMARK YOUNG HAS BEEN named managing director of Bluetree’s print division eight years after joining the Rother-ham online trade printer’s artwork team.

The move is a logical step in a year in which the group has changed direction to become a major producer of disposable face masks alongside printed products.

Company founders James Kinsella and Adam Carnell have

roles that straddle both parts of the business, leaving space for someone to head the print operation.

Young has moved from artworks to head of studio and more recently to head of Route 1 Print before becoming managing director of Bluetree Print.

“While it has been an incred-ibly difficult year within the industry, I’m very excited to be given this opportunity to

help drive the company towards future growth.”

He has already been instru-mental in the investment and commissioning of the Landa S10P which came on stream just as the country was locking down. “Bluetree Group is at a very significant junction in its life and I am delighted to get to work with the team, uphold-ing Bluetree’s core values, as we move into a post pandemic world,” he says.

Mark Young.

Inshaw joins Delga WILL INSHAW has joined Delga Group as scheduling manager working across both Delga Press and recently formed Delga Labels.

He brings 17 years’ experi-ence in litho and digital printing, much of that with Headley Brothers before its closure, and Pureprint and Fox Soluions since. He says: “I have been watching the Delga group for a while now and have always admired their ability to adapt and change, diversifying the brand constantly. Not many print companies can do that.”

Little to head AVT

NEIL LITTLE has joined Esko as UK sales manager for its AVT quality inspection systems busi-

ness. He has worked previously on the converter side of the packaging sector.

AVT is one of Esko’s more recent acquisitions and has a range of inspection systems which analyse print quality in real time looking for the flaws in print quality, complement-ing Esko’s range of prepress systems for packaging.

Little says: “Esko and AVT, the global leaders in print inspection solutions, have a great reputation in the market. I’m looking forward to working with our customers, new and old, to bring seamless auto-mation and connectivity to managing quality. It’s going to be an exciting year ahead.”

Screen names packaging headSCREEN EUROPE has named Juan Cano as director business development flexible packag-ing, the newest division for the Japanese print technology group.

It joins the label division and commercial print based on the TPJ 520HD inkjet press.

Screen introduced the True-press PAC 830F, an inkjet press for flexible packaging appli-cations as a replacement for

analogue technologies on short run work.

Cano comes to Screen with 20 years’ experience, working for Bobst and having filled other sales and marketing roles across the packaging sector. “Juan is an accomplished and highly experienced leader in the flex-ible packaging industry, with a proven track record in business development and sustainable sales growth of high value, innovative packaging equip-ment,” says Bui Burke, SVP sales Screen Europe.

Domino grows corrugated teamDOMINO HAS BOOSTED its digital printing solutions teams with the appointment of Matt Condon as head of the digital corrugated business devel-

opment manager. Domino is aiming to repeat the success it has had in label printing in the new digital corrugated packag-ing sector.

Ben Ginesi joins the team as European sales manager, and will be in contact with pros-pects in the UK and mainland Europe. His counterpart in North America will be Lloyd Kent.

Ginesi joins Domino after 18 years at HSG and he brings production experience of inkjet corrugated printing. “I’m delighted to be embark-ing on a new career chapter with Domino,” he says. “It’s a growing sector and my role is to help support Domino’s custom-ers’ understanding of what can be achieved with both long and short run applications.” n

Juan Cano.

Ben Ginesi.

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