Offset Printing

Bishops sees Inpress Control as its “check mate” move

Wednesday 14. May 2014 - Bishops Printers has invested close to £2m with Heidelberg this year. It has taken delivery of a Stitchmaster ST 450 saddle-stitcher and in the next month will take delivery of a Speedmaster XL 75-10-P, its first press with the time-saving Inpress Control automated colour and register control.

“Inpress Control adds £250,000 to the total spend so we needed to be clear on the benefits in terms of reduced waste, improved accuracy and speed of makeready and, importantly, to know this will provide us with a tool to give customers the confidence in our colour and quality. Being able to provide evidence of that control with readouts supersedes old fashioned proofing, PDFs or high res pulls.
“After all our research and evaluation, I will be astonished if we ever buy a press without Inpress Control again. It will not only provide a quality and productivity boost, it will also safeguard the resale value of the press,” says Gareth Roberts, managing director at the Portsmouth-based printer.
The company sees Inpress Control as a stepping stone to ISO 12647-2 colour certification. If customer demand for great colour control dictated this part of the investment, it is the rise in the use of silk papers over gloss stocks that has decided the company on the ten-unit configuration. Silk papers require a seal on the fifth and tenth unit to allow work to be moved straight through to postpress processes without fear of marking. It has already realised the benefits of Autoplate XL on previous purchases, reducing plate changes from 12 to 2 minutes which with an average of 14 makereadies per press a day represents a significant time saving.
This is a replacement press and so Bishops retains the largest UK battery of B2 Speedmasters, a total of 70 units.
Bishops recognises that the adoption of Inpress Control represents a cultural change and it has chosen its colour champions to train to deliver the quality and performance gains this tool offers. It requires a change in mindset in prepress as well as on press and Bishops is already well equipped with Prinect workflows for closed loop colour and speedy makereadies.
“There comes a point at which you can’t expect Heidelberg and the fantastic technology to do all the work. We have to invest in our people, in developing their skills and the processes to make best use of the equipment we buy. We are doing just that,” says Mr Roberts.
The ST 450 saddle-stitcher replaces an older Muller Martini machine and means that Bishops is running three Stitchmasters – an 8-, 6- and this latest 4- plus cover feed models. That means it can offer its commercial and direct mail customers a wide range of stitching options. It has seen a rise in the volume of stitched products.
“The productivity of the ST 450 is terrific. Our business remains challenging but I really believe investment is the route to success and to recovering some of the squeezed margins. We achieved a turnover of £19.6m (year to 31 January 2014) and this year are aiming to achieve £22m. This latest round of investment will help us get there,” says Mr Roberts.
Bishops Printers operates 24/7 and has close to 2,500 customers and handles over 20,000 jobs a year.