Say what? A quick word with Vince Brearey

Why choose the Koenig & Bauer Rapida 145?

Everybody makes a good press these days, but you are very limited in choice on large format. This is our fifth Koenig & Bauer and something would need to be very special to change a 20 year relationship. Once we saw this machine our minds were pretty much made up.

What difference will it make?

There is a huge productivity and efficiency gain over the 142, through plate changing and wash ups, changing the anilox and the feeder – I love the feeder and delivery. We haven’t changed settings since it arrived. We might have chosen the 18,000sph version, but we don’t need the additional 2,000sph for the type of work we do. The Rapida 142 has been fantastic, but the technology develops so quickly. Running speeds have doubled, up times have increased with washing and plate changing that are so much quicker and colour is so much more consistent with inline colour control.

What other changes might be needed?

We have had to buy a new platesetter for the larger format plates and are looking at a carton gluer because that’s where the analysis says there will be a bottleneck next. We have three gluing lines at the moment and three platens, in each case one for B1 and two for large format, just like the presses. We will keep investing.

How can OP&P thrive?

The attitude is very different, much faster to make a decision with just a team of three shareholders than a head office deciding which site should get what investment. This is a very entrepreneurial business, we are fast to make decisions. We have the large format capacity that groups have, but with the mindset of a small company.