The first trucks loaded with a seven-colour Speedmaster for Herbert Walkers will arrive at its Shipley factory tomorrow (Tuesday).
The press is a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL106-7+L which the company hopes will be ready to roll in the new year after a period of training and commissioning. “It includes cutting edge new technology,” says Herbert Walkers managing director Mike Lammas. “We have spent a lot in upgrading finishing for packaging and greetings cards and now have four foiling machines. We only ordered the press at the end of August and wanted to get it in as quickly as possible.”
A 15-year-old Speedmaster CD102 has been removed leaving the company with a brace of XL105s. The new machine will be installed in a different part of the factory to the press that has been removed. “At the end of the process we will have a really nice press room and workflow,” he says. “This will be a world class factory set up with industry leading equipment paired with our first class workforce.”
While the company also uses Heidelberg consumables and is upgrading its Prinect workflow to Prinect Production Manager status with seamless links to the prepress workflow. Despite this, the new press was not an automatic decision.
“We genuinely looked elsewhere,” says Lammas, “even though we have been a Heidelberg house for many years. We are staying with Heidelberg for the right reason because this is the right machine.”
The configuration was selected because packaging customers now want and expect seven colours. The company considers but rejected a double coater saying that if this is needed, it will be able to use the final print unit to apply a coating.
The press will be printing greetings cards and cartons for mid sized customers. The company does not want to compete with the packaging groups that service the largest retail brands. Its typical packaging customer is also making extensive use of hot foil, a process shared with greetings cards.
Here too the company cannot compete with high volumes of cards shipped in from China, but can produce single wrap cards with foil for card publishers. This business continues to account for 35-40% of sales.
It is the first press to come with Inpress Control to help achieve the consistency that both packaging buyers and card publishers insist on. The company will continue to use Image Control as part of quality control process.
The machine also chimes with the company’s efforts to reduce its environmental footprint. The new machine reduces power requirements and cuts waste and is “generally more productive. Sheets printed per Kw/hr will increase,” says Lammas. Press speed reaches 18,000sph, a considerable leap on the machine it replaces.
The £3.5 million investment follows on from a £3 million spend on finishing since the end of lockdowns. This includes Novacut 106 ER die cutter, a Visionfoil 104, both from Bobst, and Signature folder gluer.
