Offset Printing

Surrey printer celebrates its tenth anniversary with an XL 75

Quality commercial printer D2 came to Drupa 2008 without any intention of buying a press but when the team saw the Speedmaster XL 75 in the Heidelberg halls the decision was made. It chose to treat itself to its first brand new press, a five-colour with coater, as a tenth anniversary present.

Wednesday 23. July 2008 - Quality commercial printer D2 came to Drupa 2008 without any intention of buying a press but when the team saw the Speedmaster XL 75 in the Heidelberg halls the decision was made. It chose to treat itself to its first brand new press, a five-colour with coater, as a tenth anniversary present.

The West Molesey company operates with a Speedmaster CD 102-6 from its freehold 15,000 sq ft factory. It wanted a B2 format press to ensure it minimised its paper waste and it was blown away by the short makereadies and flexibility of the XL 75.

“It’s clean, lean and green,” says David Houghton who runs the company with David Harrison to give it the name D2.

“We are proud to be investing again in Heidelberg equipment and in such a fantastic bit of kit. Heidelberg is a company whose ‘high values’ mirror our own.”

Lean manufacturing is key to the company’s success and it feels the hourly output of the XL 75 will allow it to protect its profit margins, safeguard its quality reputation and provide its customers with an even faster service.

“We don’t make rash decisions but we have space in our factory having sold off a five-colour CD 102 this year and we knew we wanted to replace it with the very latest technology to give us the highest number of makereadies per hour. The XL 75 really will make us faster, better, cheaper,” says Mr Houghton.

More than two-thirds of its work comes direct from end users, the remainder from agencies and a print management company. Its average print run is 3,000 and includes promotional material, Report & Accounts and general commercial jobs.

The XL 75 features the new Prinect Press Center and Intellistart which, working in tandem with Axis Control spectrophotometry, means very fast set up times and consistent colour control to reduce waste sheets. This is important to the company which in the next couple of months hopes to attain FSC accreditation.

The new press is due for delivery in January 2009 and has the potential to lift the company’s turnover from £2.5m to £4m. Last year the company upgraded its CtP system (which runs processless plates to eliminate the chemistry) and its intention is to integrate prepress and press using Prinect Prepress Interface.

With David Houghton and David Harrison at Drupa was Silvana Firetto who handles the company’s finances and Neil James, production manager. D2 employs 20 staff and operates on a Continental shift system.