Allan Gray stops by a stack of pages printed on Ashford Colour Press’s large format KBA, points to the pages of what will, once bound, become a text book and says: “There’s no reason why that should not have been printed inkjet.”
The sheet had pages with plenty of text, a coloured tint border and a few diagrams. That it was being printed litho probably had more to do with the publisher’s preference than for any economic reason.
Some publishers, says Gray, operations director at Ashford, continue to be wedded to litho. Some, having tested digital and inkjet in particular, are happy with the process and some, including Pearson, have led the drive to adopt inkjet technology.
At Ashford Colour Press on the south coast at Gosport, Hampshire, this has meant first one HP T230 series and now a second, installed after the Hunkeler Innovation Days earlier this year. Hunkeler has provided two BookLines to take the printed reels from the inkjet presses, fold, cut and glue these into book blocks for binding.
The inkjet presses are against two of the walls of the factory bay used for digital printing. Another wall has a Xerox Nuvera soon to be joined by a Ricoh Pro C9100. The Hunkeler BookLines run across the centre of the room. While not closed off from the rest of the factory, there are ceiling humidifiers to optimise conditions for paper and printing.
When Ashford installs a third and possibly a fourth HP at some point in the future, the space will need to be reorganised again and perhaps expanded. Currently the digital area is the domain of Jaime Layton, digital production manager, and a small team that reports to him.
The first inkjet press was installed two-and-a-half years ago, with plans to build volumes cautiously. “But during the busy period last year, it was clear that we needed a second line to take up the demand. The only question was whether this should be a mono or a four-colour machine,” says Layton.
The decision fell to a second four-colour press to better support the first machine and because the company calculated there would be enough demand for colour printing to justify the investment.
Both HPs are workhorse presses. And despite setting production records on the T230, the decision to opt for a second T230 was simple. “We looked at other options,” says Layton. “A bigger machine, perhaps a T360 or T410, but we couldn’t make the cap ex work based on the workload we knew would be coming in. This way we keep the same reel widths for both machines and for the BookLines.”
The BookLine is equally important to the success of Ashford’s operation as the presses. The first was only the fifth that Hunkeler had built and incorporated additions that Ashford had specified.
“We wanted it to do things that the previous machines didn’t offer,” says Gray. Not surprisingly with very new technology there was a settling in period during which almost nightly calls and emails about niggles were dealt with. “Hunkeler wouldn’t walk away,” says Gray. “And to be able to talk to head of the company Stefan Hunkeler was comforting.”
With the second BookLine, Gray was pleased to see improvements and changes that had been made, some relating to observations that Ashford had made. The first has been upgraded to the same specification. For production efficiencies, one line focuses on 4pp sections, the other of 6pp.
Grey had already experience of working with Hunkeler’s UK agent Friedheim International through buying MBO folders. “They are the best supplier that we deal with,” he says. When Ashford began looking for a finishing system for the inkjet press, there were a number available and he was not aware that Hunkeler was handled by Friedheim.
“We had had Hunkeler equipment on a Xerox Sedona, but that came with the press. We didn’t know Friedheim was the Hunkeler agent,” he says.
The choice of the HP press was more straightforward. Pearson had championed this machine and while Gray looked around at other technologies, realised that Pearson had also looked into it and was working well with printers already using HP technology. It seemed senseless to go against this tide. He says he is glad he didn’t.
“The HP T230 is a true production machine. It’s built to run and run and only causes problems when it doesn’t run, when nozzles can dry or bubbles arise in the ink. It is a fabulous machine for us,” he explains.
Despite the encouragement of a major customer, the move to digital was still a leap into the dark. The company anticipated 30-40% usage in the first year growing as confidence increased.
“We didn’t know how much work publishers would give us,” he says. “Pearson had pushed for the HP technology, so we realised we had to do it and braced ourselves. At that point we didn’t know what might happen, whether it would substitute for the litho or bring in new work. We asked publishers but they wouldn’t comment on the volumes we might expect. It was an unknown.
“It has attracted a different type of job. Litho volumes are down, but only by around 20%, while publishers are better able to exploit their back lists, adopt automatic stock replenishment and create custom books.”
It is not about print on demand. It will still take ten days to turn a job around, when a run of 700 copies of a 1,500pp book takes 30 hours on the Bookline and perhaps 50 hours on printing, this is not surprising.
But there are no plates, no makereadies and fewer production steps. If there are very short runs, Ashford will try to batch these titles in order not to loose production efficiencies.
Quality, while not quite matching litho, is accepted by publishers and is unnoticeable to readers. What it does mean, Gray points out, is that on-press adjustment is impossible. On some jobs, children’s books with large amounts of colour for example, there is no difference in quality.
At first the Hunkeler finishing system was installed to run inline with the press as this offered the most effective use of staff resources. This arrangement continued for three or so months with the press stopped with every job change needing makeready on the BookLine.
As printing only starts when the press is running at its 122m/min operating speed, this resulted in substantial waste and affected productivity. It was on schedule to produce 26 million sellable pages a month with 12% paper waste and stood waiting for one-third of production time.
Once the press and BookLine were decoupled, productivity leaped forwards. “We would never consider putting a folder on the KBA, why should the inkjet press be different?” says Gray. Waste levels dropped to 2% and productivity shot up. “After two months we were setting production records.”
There are other benefits to finishing away from the press. The reels are held for a short time before feeding to the BookLines. This allows the pages with heavier ink coverage to dry fully so that all pages are in the same condition when folded. When pages are still wet there might be problems with runability through the equipment.
“Paper has to be stable across the product,” says Gray. Ashford prints on CVG’s papers to minimise inconsistency rather than trying to prime standard papers or print directly to these. It is about productivity. Other papers might be cheaper, but would need priming and might not work as well.
It is also changing how Ashford operates as publishers accept digital printing. Initial print runs may still use litho, says Gray, but digital enables them to remove risk from the way they work. Instead of ordering in huge numbers from printers in Asia to get the lowest unit cost, but with that the prospect of an unknown number of unsold books in warehouses, publishers can order litho quantities to begin with and can then switch to digital for top up quantities.
“They are running automatic stock replenishment systems and can exploit backlists which wasn’t feasible before,” says Gray. “It is also letting them produce custom titles combining chapters or papers from different titles to create course specific textbooks.”
The operators are fully trained on all the equipment, a tenet that both ensures production efficiency and that there is complete buy in to the technology.
“Training is a big issue for us. Operators went to San Diego and Switzerland for training by the manufacturer before installation. There is always a learning curve with new equipment, but our operators know what the equipment can do and that they can do it. It shows them that as a company we are taking the investment seriously,” Gray explains.
The most recent investment has been a rebuilt Acora A5 binding line able to bind the digital books at 3,500 copies an hour without questions of quality.
What it has done is completely change the nature of Ashford as a business. Turnover is still around £12 million from 126 staff, but instead of this coming from 8-10 jobs a day, the factory might process some than 50 separate jobs in a day.
“The change has happened very, very quickly,” says Gray. “It has been like a cascade of water coming towards us.” There is, he says, “one more litho press” to buy and the adds that demonstrations of KBA technology at its recent open day were “mind blowing” but the future is digital.
“I can’t think what would have happened to us had we stayed heavy metal and not changed. Inkjet has changed us and the way books are produced has changed drastically because of it.”
Ashford Colour Press is veery happy with HP’s T series.
Digital production manager Jaime Layton: “It was important that we keep the same reel widths for both machines and the BookLines.”
