County Durham print business PBL is part way through an investment cycle that touches on every department in the Chester Le Street business.
Installation of 667 solar panels on the roof of its hilltop premises has been joined by a Polar 92 guillotine, Horizon BQ500 perfect binder and HT300 three-knife trimmer.
It is now preparing an area on the ground floor to house a Canon iX3200 cutsheet inkjet press and a Canon V1000 toner press. These replace a digital line up based on Heidelberg Versafire cutsheet digital presses. Two are being replaced.
Sales and marketing director Chris Murley says: “Digital print has increased dramatically over the past two years and the toner devices, although good machines, can only offer so much with a click charge system. Changing to inkjet gives us a much larger scope to produce all of the toner work and then remove some of the shorter run work from the litho side and helping to increase the profitability of this type of work.
“The Canon option was chosen after looking at various options and the professional way Canon have handled our discussions and also the print speed and quality together with the pricing model is why we have chosen this machine.”
Murley and fellow director and founder Eric Stevenson also visited machines that were already installed in the North East to confirm its decision was the right one.
The two Canon machines are due for delivery at the end of November. Murley is anticipating a strong impact on what digital print is capable of. He says: “It will offer a much improved litho or even better quality product plus variable data and give us more than double the capacity.”
This will have a further impact on litho, represented by two 2016 Speedmaster XL75s and Suprasetters to feed them with plates. In the early part of 2024, PBL intends to replace these with a Speedmaster CX104 four-colour plus coater press, a Signasetter for the larger format and a Polar 137 for the same reason. This comes with a Transmit system to ensure that neatly jogged piles are presented to the guillotine’s blade.
When the business installed the XL75s seven years ago, it was a move from SRA3 Speedmaster Anilox presses to the larger format, something that PBL is now on the verge of repeating. At that time the company’s SM74 was becoming busier as digital was eating the shorter runs. Now digital has become even more competitive and is taking on B2 work while the larger B1 press will absorb the longer run jobs from the XL75s.
The company was able to keep operating through pandemic as a major part of its work is destined for NHS Trusts.
