Solopress has put on hold plans to move to new premises, having taken delivery of the world’s first HP PageWide T250 HD running with Brilliant Inks. This has solved its capacity problems and hopefully increased efficiency for the Southend on Sea online trade printer, though the full impact of the transition from litho to inkjet still need to be assessed.
A second inkjet press had been pencilled in for delivery last month, but for unsurprising reasons there has been a delay until an unspecified delivery date, says managing director Simon Cooper.
The first inkjet press was delivered in March along with Hunkeler reel to sheet finishing to replace four of the company’s B2 Heidelberg Speedmaster. It retains three XL75 long perfectors and one SM74 for the slightly out of kilter jobs, for now at least. The magic that has enabled this has been the development of HP‘s Brilliant Inks which will allow Solopress to print on standard litho papers with no further priming.
Delivery of the inkjet press ended a search which had begun a year ago. At that time, Solopress had been considering a move to new single site location to replace the split production operation it currently has. “We started planning the capex and plans for 2020 a year ago,” says Cooper. “We had in our minds that we would have to move to find space to grow, or with the same space we have, could we do things more efficiently here?
“A move is a major distraction both in terms of logistics and experience and would slow development of new products. That started us looking at inkjet.”
The due diligence process took in different vendors and trips around the world when international travel was still trouble free. “We saw Screen at Printing United in Texas in November and then at its Amstelveen showroom, HP in Barcelona, Canon in Poing and Landa in Israel. And we saw Ricoh in Telford.
“All of them had a really strong offering.” The HP T200 series machines are well established, but until the development of the T250 HD with modified printheads and the Brilliant Ink had not reached the quality or maturity that Cooper was looking for. That was the factor that tilted the balance.
“The biggest leap mentally when we have always been sheetfed, is wrapping your head around what it is like producing from reels,” he says.
Solopress understands the sheetfed model, ganging jobs on a sheet and using B2 presses in order to do this and ensure next day delivery. The company needs to produce plates, print and move jobs a few hundred metres up the road to its separate finishing plant, so has a midday cutoff.
Now it has created space by removing the sheetfed presses and has digital finishing alongside the presses for instant finishing. Instead of waiting until plates are filled with suitable jobs, the task is now to load a reel of paper with work. “Time to press is much shorter,” he says. “We think we will be able to save three hours in a nine-hour day. That’s a 50% improvement in productivity and a massive change for our business.”
It will take 45 minutes to print a reel, switching from one job to another with no intervening makeready or waste. It uses HP’s Siteflow workflow across both the inkjet and its HP Indigo sheetfed machines. The printed reel goes to the Hunkeler line for cutting and slitting at 180m/minute.
The company installed two HP Indigo 10000 B2 presses last year and has now added two 7800s as part of this investment round. Three of the older iGen machines have been replaced as a consequence. It still has four of the Xerox machines.
“We have the potential to handle more jobs on the digital presses than on offset,” says Cooper. “And can direct the longer runs to the litho presses where they are most effective.”
The arrival of Covid-19 has altered some of the initial plans, including adding a delay to installation of the second web press. While the company experienced an overnight plunge in orders, it has been able to develop 30 new print products for social distancing, including floor graphics, masks and protective screens.
This has been successful leading to a record week in terms of orders from new customers. The challenge is now to convert these into regular customers. “The new products have made up to 30% of our revenue during the crisis,” he adds.
The intention is to run the inkjet presses on Solopress‘s existing work mix for two shifts, leaving a quiet time of eight hours a day. Solopress is eyeing ways to take up this slack. “An area we are keen to be in is publishing. In Scandinavia the group has a T240 which is used for publishing, so we have knowledge in this area. We think that by using HP’s Piazza publishers can exploit their back catalogue.”
In turn Solopress‘s decision has influenced Onlineprinters, its parent company that has just installed a second Indigo 100K. Now it too will install a pair of PageWide T250 HD machines.
Simon Cooper says the decision to invest in inkjet followed extensive due diligence on the technology available.
