Scottish Pioneer Makes Radical Upgrades |
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The Ink Shop, which was the first company in Scotland and second in the UK to buy the Speedmaster SM52-8P, has been so successful with it that it is trading it in after only 18 months to make way for a larger B2 format Speedmaster SM 74-10P.
Its production hub in Cumbernauld currently feeds eight shops in Scotland, soon to be nine with the addition of Hamilton shortly. But the company is also offering franchise opportunities initially to 30 main centres in England including cities like London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle. It hopes to have a total of 80 sites by 2011. And response so far has been 'staggering' even before any official marketing and promotion work, according to Ink Shop’s managing director Stuart Mason (pictured above).
With this in mind the quadrupling of capacity that its current round of investment coupled with a move to 24 hour, seven day a week production has to be fully justified. Previously it had run a two shift system giving it 6am to 10pm cover.
‘Our eight-colour SM 52 was working at full capacity so we had to decide whether to buy another or go up to B2,’ said Mason. ‘By switching to B2 production we can handle products we couldn’t before such as document folders and longer run brochure and leaflet work. The two extra units will be used predominantly to seal but it is good to be able to offer customers added value such as full or spot varnish or Pantone colours.’
With the arrival of the press this month comes a Suprasetter 74 CTP system, marking Ink Shop’s first move away from polyester to metal plate production.
‘We have used polyester plates for 15 years but we have two reasons for switching now to metal. Firstly I am 99.9 per cent sure the printing industry will be in bother over waste, especially silver waste, over the next five years and so we have made the decision to go chemistry-free which we can do with the Suprasetter. Secondly with polyester we have been restricted to a 175lpi screen ruling and now we want to go to 300lpi and use stochastic which we can very easily with PrintReady 3.0 prepress software,’ said Mason.
With Prepress Interface connecting prepress and press, fully automatic ink.line replacing handy.fill and AxisControl spectrophotometry, Mason is justified in describing his press as ‘fully loaded’.
Earlier this year Ink Shop took on a second Polar 78, a format well able to cope with sheets from the new press. He has also upgraded his Duplo bookletmaker to enable it to handle 80pp as well as 40pp booklets with a second System 5000 due in May.
‘Our business is response driven. We take the order on day one, print day two and deliver day three so we have to seal work and cut-fold immediately,’ said Mason. ‘Training and print testing starts next week so we really are on the brink of production on the new press.’
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Speedmaster SM 52
This press sets unprecedented standards. With more than 15,000 printing units sold so far it is the most successful high-end press in high-quality commercial printing in the 35 x 50 cm (14 x 20 inches) format range.
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