Denmaur is introducing Reel Fast as a way to order and receive bespoke sizes of paper with a five working day turnaround.
The service is delivered from its Bescot site which has three Pasaban sheeters in place able to deliver sheets with a minimum of 300x310mm to 1,850×2,200mm format. Most will be much smaller than this and will be suited to standard sheetfed offset presses, but with far less waste than printing a bespoke some out of a standard format paper. That difference can become quite significant over a long run, according to Denmaur marketing and sustainability director Danny Doogan. “Reel Fast will deliver credible cost savings and it can also quantify the waste and carbon saved over an equivalent standard sheet size – information that customers are increasingly demanding,” he says.
While minimum order quantities and pricing will be between paper merchant and printer, Doogan reckons that the greater the run, the greater the potential for cost savings through reducing the tonnage of paper printed.
The Pasaban sheeters are housed at Denmaur’s Bexcot site near Walsall and where acquired when it bought the former Middleton Papers business. A team has been working on this project since the start of the year, he says. It has required discussion with mills that Denmaur represents to ensure availability of stock to be sheeted down. A standard 1,296mm-wide reel can produce two pallets of 640mmx780mm or three at 450x520mm from a 1,366mm reel.
“This works where a printer can save say 10mm from the width and 15mm from the length of a sheet across an order for 250,000 sheets. Once a job requires 10 tonne of paper and is repeated several times a year, the savings can be substantial,” he says.
Denmaur director Andy Buxton adds: “The state of the art conversion facility at Bescot enables us to offer customised sheet sizes over as an alternative to the off the shelf standard, which will reduce their costs as well as their waste and carbon emissions.
“Although it’s possible to order a specified sheet size direct from the mill, average lead times can vary from four to six weeks. The Reel Fast service will ensure sheeting and delivery within five days from receipt of a customer’s order.”
The service will be offered with Denmaur’s Amadeus and Revive ranges to begin with, gradually expanding to take in more grades and substrates stretch from newsprint style weights to packaging boards.
While pricing will be determined on a negotiated basis at least to start with, the appeal goes beyond the financial. The reduced sheet sizes will mean a saving in carbon, a saving in waste and so on and that is becoming increasingly important to both printers and their customers. A calculator will be provide on the Denmaur website to enable customers to work out what the savings are and therefore how the carbon impact will be reduced.
“We believe that printers will be able to use this as a selling point for customers who are asking about the carbon footprint of a job.”
