Offset Printing
The Knights – they came, the saw, they bought
Monday 24. May 2010 - The Anton Group has gained a reputation for buying big at shows and today they showed that Ipex 2010 was going to be no exception. Four of the Knight family stopped by to view the Heidelberg stand this morning and to shake hands with Heidelberg chief executive Bernhard Schreier on a £12.6m, three presses and a folder, deal. Antons chief executive John Knight was joined by his brother Stephen and sons Gary and Barry.
The three presses are Speedmaster XL 105s, one 12- and two ten-colour machines and these will be called off in stages, the first next March, the second in March 2012. The timing of the third has not yet been specified. This order will complete the transformation of the pressroom at the 160,000 sq ft factor in Dunston, near Basildon, from an all SM 102 long perector operation to one which will have five XL 105s and one or two SM 102s.
It will be no surprise to anyone who knows The Anton Group that the presses are highly specified, each ordered with CutStar, Autoplate XL and Inpress Control. These were specified for the first two XL 105s the company took and each has been producing 50-60 million sheets a year.
“Inpress Control is fantastic,” says Gary. “It should be on all presses for faster makeready with least waste. It scans and measures every 16th sheet and keeps the colour and dot gain in line all the time. With the requirement today for ISO 12647 colour standards, a demand we get daily, and clients frequently doing on site audits it is a critical tool enabling us to work to the optimum quality.
“Im equally enthusiastic about Autoplate XL. Our second XL 105-12-P produced 300 different posters with an average run of 1,000 in 72 hours. No operator could change ten plates on a press at that speed. With Autoplate XL makeready now takes five to ten minutes, manually it would be 20-25 minutes.”
The presses have to be well maintained (Inpress Control helps here as well) and Anton is a convert to service contracts and says that Heidelbergs response, engineering expertise and quick fix philosophy is one of the fundamental reasons it remains loyal to the company.
“There is mutual respect and commitment between our two companies and that stops us having to have more than a watching brief on other press suppliers. There is no one close to Heidelberg right now,” says Gary Knight.
Arriving long before the presses, probably in July, is Antons 14th folder and its second KH 82 combination machine. “With XL technology Heidelberg has stepped up production by 40 or 45% and this type of productivity increase is matched with this latest generation folder. We have seen the difference it makes and weve come back for another. To print we need one machine but most work goes through three or more finishing processes and that is why our bindery has a high volume of high output equipment running 24/7 week in, week out,” says Gary.
“Everyone has found market conditions challenging but we are being positive and moving forward. We have a lot of customer loyalty and were delivering quality goods to tight deadlines all the time but to do that and run efficiently we need the right technology. Thats why were on the Heidelberg stand today.”