Finishing & Screen Printing

Eclipse gives green light to double folder investment by 4DM

Friday 01. March 2013 - When Eclipse Colour Print completed the acquisition of 4DM last September it gave the go-ahead to the purchase of two new and more automated folders to relieve bottlenecks at peak production periods.

As a result two Stahlfolder TH 56 machines will be delivered to the Kettering plant in March and will operate around the clock, positioning the company for sales growth.
The folders will replace two older machines and give a 25% increase in output. Selection of the folders had begun before and during Drupa last year and involved both Eclipse’s head of manufacturing David Weiss and the team at the 4DM plant.
Automation across the buckle-combination divide is transforming folding, increasing throughput and the accuracy of folding. Once the length, width and thickness of a sheet is measured all the rollers in the folder are set, allowing for the fold configuration and resulting product thickness at each stage of production. It means very fast set up and much higher uptime.
Time trials comparing a manual folder (a Stahlfolder Ti52) and the automated TH 56 are convincing. Eight jobs were run by Heidelberg, each involving a run of 100 copies of products on 115gsm stock. Given the low run the machine was run at its default speed of 120m/minute. The Ti 52 manual machine completed the eight job in 49 minutes, the TH 56 with the jobs to programme in 27 minutes and the TH 56 using programmes from memory (for repeat work) in just 11 minutes.
Andrew Jack, post press sales representative for Heidelberg, says: “We worked closely with 4DM over a long period, looking at the type of work, product mix and volumes they handled and it was clear that they would benefit from the productivity gains the TH 56 could bring them.”
The 4DM direct mail business was acquired by Eclipse after 20 months rather than the five years envisaged because the synergy was so obvious.
“We can sell more streams that just print – digital, paper enclosing, database services and cross media. We accelerated the buyout because the reasons to buy were so clear and we needed to get completion. Many of our customers are already using all the services we offer as a group with five adjacent plants,” says Simon Moore, managing director. He is happy that the investment in these two folders will pave the way to further business growth.