Offset Printing
Gomer Press upgrades to new high speed colour press
Monday 02. March 2009 - Gomer Press has switched from a Speedmaster SM 102 to an XL105 and moved away from perfecting to a four-unit machine with dedicated in-line coating.
“Our last press was a perfector but because the majority of our work is colour we decided to go for a straight press and have the 18,000sph rather than 15,000sph running speed. Overall, this latest model should give us a 33% lift in productivity,” says managing director Jonathan Lewis.
The Speedmaster XL 105-4+L with Inpress Control spectrophotometry will enable the company, which is based in Llandysul in south west Wales, to handle even the heavy seasonal pressure in the September to December period when it has a lot of limp and case bookwork to produce for the Christmas market. The company also handles a wide range of commercial work, including dual language (Welsh and English) leaflets and brochures. Most of its work is from Wales but it does handle contracts from Northern Ireland, The Isle of Man, Scotland and England as well.
Before Christmas Gomer Press upgraded its prepress workflow and imposition software to the latest levels, which also involved setting up for the larger format plates of the XL 105 which runs on triple shifts to give round-the-clock service.
The company is over 100 years old and has remained relatively busy in the past three months although, like other printers, remains cautious about the outlook for 2009.