Offset Printing

Celebrating with a press unit for every decade in print

Reg Parsons is celebrating his 50th year in print with the purchase of his company NS Print’s first five-colour press, a Printmaster PM 52-5 from Heidelberg. He hopes this addition will pump up productivity, enable it to handle a wider range of work and push turnover up 10-15% to top the £500,000 mark over the next year or 18 months.

Thursday 28. February 2008 - Reg Parsons is celebrating his 50th year in print with the purchase of his company NS Print’s first five-colour press, a Printmaster PM 52-5 from Heidelberg. He hopes this addition will pump up productivity, enable it to handle a wider range of work and push turnover up 10-15% to top the £500,000 mark over the next year or 18 months.

When Reg Parsons left school he had intended to become a carpenter/joiner but was offered the chance to become a printer and took it. Only years later when researching documents about his father (who had been killed in action in the Second World War before Reg was born) did he discover that his father had been in printing before joining the army.

Today Mr Parsons runs NS Print with his wife, son and two daughters and the company takes in general commercial work, including some trade contracts, generally from within a 50 mile radius of the Wem, Shropshire, operation.

A loyal Heidelberg customer who started with single colour machines, adding to the portfolio and extending the range on a regular basis he now has both a four- and a five-colour B3 press as well as spot colour facilities.

“On occasions we are asked for a special corporate colour but the reason for five colours is primarily so that we can coat sheets and work and turn and finish jobs faster,” says Mr Parsons. “Mostly our work is in the 1,000 to 10,000 sector although jobs can be large; recently we handled a 1,000 run of 132pp full colour book for Ellesmere College. Because we are specialist in relatively short runs the emphasis is on fast makeready and with this press we have Prepress Interface for quick set up, blanket wash and semi-automatic plate loading.”

The company looked at other manufacturer’s products “but with little enthusiasm” because, says Mr Parsons, “Our Heidelberg experience is that you know the equipment will run well and won’t need a lot of maintenance.”

The Printmaster PM 52 is a 13,000sph machine which handles work from 105 x 145mm up to 370 x 520mm and with a thickness of 0.03 to 0.4mm.

NS Print had the floor of its building reinforced to a depth of 4 metres to house the new press which arrived this week.