The 60-year-old company undertook the £50,000 project to accommodate its pre-press operations, including a new Suprasetter A75 platesetter from Heidelberg, purchased just before Christmas. 

Marstan managing director Martin Lett Junior said: “The building work took a few weeks but there was virtually no disruption. We got the A75 in situ in advance and that enabled us to keep operating.”

The A75 will run alongside a five-year-old Suprasetter 74 in the purpose-built 200sqm CTP suite and will help keep the company’s 10-colour perfecting Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75 operating at full speed by ensuring a steady supply of plates.

“The XL 75 makes ready in about five and a half minutes and when you’ve got a short-run job with numerous sections it’s literally: plates on, run, plates off, plates on, run, etc.

“The saving will be in cutting downtime. We were standing still waiting for plates.”

The A75 can output up to 22 B2 plates per hour.

The XL 75 was installed in April last year and the company found it was having to work hard to maximise productivity on the press.

“We were in a position where we were having to plan our work around how many plates we could output rather than how fast the press could produce so we had to invest,” said production manager David Wood.

The Bexleyheath facility runs 24/6 and operates to Heidelberg IS12647-2 Colour Club standards.