Finishing & Screen Printing
Long-Standing Partnerships, Rapid Growth
Tuesday 26. April 2016 - As it seeks to double its book production within a short period of time, Bosnia's Grafotisak has reinforced its long-standing partnership with Muller Martini.
In 2014, Grafotisak printed 13 million books, last year the figure was 18 million, and the target is to make it 25 million in the near future. The graphic design business based in Grude on the border with Croatia is not building castles in the air but rather on its solid, long-standing partnerships: what is printed with Heidelberg is print finished with Muller Martini. The innovative family-run business invested EUR 10 million last year alone to expand its contemporary machine line-up. This includes a second Diamant MC 60 bookline and four Ventura MC thread sewing machines from Muller Martini.
According to Marko Vranje, the fact that Grafotisak books, 95 percent of which are produced for export, receive so much praise from customers has a lot to do with the print finishing systems from Muller Martini.”On a scale of 1 to 10, Id give them a 10.” The son of the head of the company, who along with his brother Nikola is the Chief Commercial Officer, does not just blindly trust the machine manufacturers despite the long-standing partnership.The production manager knows very well the kind of technical finesse that is indispensable at Grafotisak in order to ensure the growth process and a high productivity with an average of 7,000 copies per run.
That is why Marko Vranje invested in an Alegro perfect binding line – example number 1 – because it features the Motion Control Technology as on the Ventura and allows for shorter make-ready times and higher quality in the end products. Example number 2: As with the Alegro A7, the Bolero B9 at Grafotisak is also connected to a Frontero front trimmer.The company used to operate two separate print runs on the Acoro, and now it is more competitive by producing brochures with flaps in a single pass.The production of thread-sewn books has also become considerably more cost-effective – example number 3 – as Grafotisak has integrated its six Ventura MC machines with three Connect systems each.This saves Grafotisak time, costs and space.