The Rosehill Press story is not so unusual. Managing director Martin Horner started the business in 1986, selling business forms by day and printing on a single colour press and guillotining by night. The initial location was above a shop near Rosehill Park in Rotherham, providing the business with a name as well as premises which it quickly outgrew.
Its next home could accommodate three business forms presses needed as the customer base grew. At this point, 20 years ago, sales director Jeff Owen had joined the business, 11 people with £750,000 sales. He recalls. “We were being asked by the people we were dealing with if we could print leaflets. At first we were outsourcing colour work and then looked at the market and bought a five-colour Speedmaster 52.”
In 1999 the company moved to the 24,500 sq ft purpose built factory it occupies today on Bradmarsh Way, though 10,500sq ft of storage has since been added.
Investment in sheetfed printing worked, the company quickly moving to five days a week production and shift work within three months. The the Heidelberg press was joined by a Sakurai 472 and when this press was replaced two years ago, production director Christian Chadwick chose a B2 Speedmaster 74.5. So far, so conventional. But this is where the Rosehill story takes an interesting turn. Today the company has 42 staff and sales of £4.5 million from a full service operation including design, cut sheet and large format digital printing, online ordering, fulfilment and a print management service for items it cannot produce inhouse.
Eighteen months ago Rosehill started looking for its next press, basing its search criteria on its job portfolio. One of the biggest is a weekly betting coupon for one of the big high street chains which had been printed on the business forms presses. “We thought it would be nice to have the flexibility to print these coupons in full colour as well as meet demands for longer run commercial work,” says Owen. “The priority however was to be able to print commercial work, up to 1 million leaflets if necessary, and to be competitive on work that we might otherwise lose to B1 printers or the web offset sector.”
The three directors had seen a Muller Martini web offset press at an exhibition and realised that this might be the answer. At that time it was configured as a reel to reel press and Rosehill wanted it to be able to sheet in A6 to A3 formats. The Swiss company obliged, working to deliver the specification that the printer wanted, and the five-unit Concepta with UV drying was installed this summer. Before it arrived four operators had been to the factory in Germany for training, followed by on site training after the press arrived. “If we have a problem, Muller Martini has been quick to send someone to help with training issue. The service and support is very good,” says Owen.
It has opened up a range of possibilities for the Yorkshire company. “We would always fall down on a job like a 56pp brochure when a customer asked to increase the print order from 20,000, where we could be competitive, to 40,000 where we could no longer compete,” Owen says. “We’re now happy to print the longer runs.”
The Speedmaster remains, as do the three forms machines. These have no dryers, no coaters and print on uncoated papers. The new web press is very different. The Concepta can print five colours straight or 4/1, is fitted with UV dryers and the top of the range Q74 sheeter, able to deliver 100,000 A4s in neat stacks an hour. “We can print high quality four colour work on coated material on the web. The printing is exactly the same quality as the flat sheet work,” he explains.
And there has been an immediate productivity gain. One five-colour job, he explains, represented around 40 hours work, printing and guillotining, with some hours drying time between. This has come down to 24 hours with sheets from the press properly dry. It’s a significant benefit.
<strongThere are no plans to chase work from a different customer segment, but rather to expand the amount of work that Rosehill can do for its existing customers. Just weeks ago, its betting office customer needed to launch a huge promotion to tie in with the start of the football season. While this is not the type of work that would normally go on the Concepta, because of its productivity Rosehill was able to keep the work in house and the client happy.
Owen explains: “We don’t want to become a massive business. We can handle the growth in capacity from the press. Our bindery is capable of coping which would not be the case if we were to be chasing a 200,000 run publication. That’s a market we are not familiar with.”
There are some magazines, for a medical publisher in London, and matchday programmes to continue the football connection; there is high quality perfect bound work, leaflets, business stationery and just about anything its customer base might want. And because of the efficiency of the Muller Martini, it will be meeting these needs for years to come.
“We are not the only B2 printer in our position,” says Owen, “I think that this sort of Muller Martini press could help a lot of printers who are like us.”
Rosehill Press has installed a Muller Martini Concepta for leaflet and coupon printing, making the Rotherham printer one of the few in the UK with this style of web press.
