Offset Printing
ESP sets new productivity record, increases in size and completes postpress upgrade
Tuesday 27. November 2012 - ESP Colour, a business which has always led the way in productivity statistics and manufacturing excellence, last week broke its own productivity record with an astonishing 498 make-readies and 2.07million impressions on its Speedmaster XL105 in one 168 hour week beating its previous record held by its two Speedmaster XL75s.
On these numbers the capability of the XL105 would be the equivalent of a staggering 25,000 make-readies and 100 million impressions per annum.
ESP’s XL105 has already hit 56 million impressions in just 41 weeks.
It billed out £198,455 on this press alone in that week, achieved an average make-ready time of 3 minutes 54 seconds and 17,108 net sheets per hour.
“We do not deem ourselves or ever have done as a traditional printer but a technology driven mass manufacturer of commodity printed products, embracing integration and automation to ensure the optimum ROI,” says Mr Thirlby.
“The average run on the XL 105 is now 4,300. It was 7,000 when this press was first installed. Due to our fully automated workflow we can now continually decrease the run length with no additional resource required”.
The coater is a critical part of the firm’s throughput. ESP has worked closely with their ink suppliers to make it even possible to run coatings on 90gsm stocks at the full 18,000sph speed, front and back.
“We have worked co-operatively with Heidelberg’s Matt Rockley and the factory’s R&D department over the last 12 months on how we can continue to optimise the XL range’s capability, this has resulted in our blanket wash time being reduced by one over minute on every make-ready; that upgrade has become a standard on the XL 106 and for us it shaved six hours off production in just one week and allowed us to gain an extra 102,000 impressions,” states Mr Thirlby.
The company, which had considered moving previously, is now remaining at its current Swindon site after taking on an adjacent 16,000sq ft unit which it has linked up by tunnel and named “The Colour Hub” tying in with a new branding which will showcase the full ESP group offerings.
Heidelberg moved all its finishing equipment to the new building over two consecutive weekends, enhancing the physical workflow and ensuring minimum downtime. There it has also just installed a fully automated Stahlfolder TH82 with twin stacker and it is matching up the physical workflow of its operation with the development of even more in house bespoke integration between Tharstern, Pressroom Manager and Postpress Manager, monitoring these production tools remotely by smart phone through Analyse Point.
Mr Thirlby has been quite clear that the power of the Inpress Control is such that he would not consider buying a press without it. It measures and monitors colour and register on the run, providing control and minimising time and materials waste.
The Colour Hub also houses ESP Web2Print its bespoke W2P division with its own in-house software development team, Code its creative agency, and ESP Digital with full cut sheet and large format manufacturing in a purpose built digital suite situated within the Colour Hub.