Offset Printing

Ipex generates East Anglian another XL 75 order

Wednesday 14. July 2010 - Blackwell Print & Marketing of Great Yarmouth sent a six strong management team to Ipex, one of its primary aims being to check out the Speedmaster XL 75 and, if unanimous, to buy one. And they have, a four-colour with coater, to replace a ten year old SM 74 but only after a thorough review of all the options.

In addition to work generated by Blackwells in the East Anglian market, it generates 50% of its volume from Advantagemedia.co.uk, an online service enabling users to buy print with the guarantee it will be despatched the same day if artwork and order are submitted before 10am. That focuses the mind on efficiency and makes the choice of digital and litho equipment critical.
“The new machine is faster but critically the makeready is very fast indeed and with the coater we can cut jobs straight off the end of the press,” says Graham Gooda, chairman of the company. “We did agonise over whether to take a fifth colour but the reality is that online ordering tends to attract process colour work rather than specials and so it would not really be cost justifiable.”
The company has two digital presses (it entered the digital market six years ago) but Mr Gooda has been staggered by how much litho press electronics have changed over the past ten years, mirroring the change in how we use electronics more in our every day lives.
“Our new press will be outputting runs of 5,000 to 20,000 around the clock five days a week,” says Mr Gooda. “It has to be robust because we are never in the situation of coming in in the morning and asking: What shall we print today? We are very response driven.”
The company has used other press technology in the past and over the last two or three years, knowing that a replacement was coming up, has reviewed the options but it came back to Heidelberg because of the overall speed of running the press, its name in the market, 24 hour availability of spares and speedy and reliable repair and maintenance service. “We have used ex-Heidelberg engineers but even on the older press they were good only up to a point. They will be even more out of date with this latest technology so we will look seriously at having a Heidelberg service contract,” says Mr Gooda.