The firm in Eastbourne, East Sussex, paid around £1m for the B1 press, which is equipped with a coater. Managing director Paul Denne said the firm looked at a number of machines, but the G40 won on price and productivity.
It replaced another B1 Lithrone, a 12-year-old, five-colour S40, and the new press runs alongside a B2 six-colour Lithrone NL628 and a Xerox iGen 150 digital press.
Denne said he hoped the new press would push the company into plastics such as bottle wraps and packaging.
His 40-year-old business has 43 staff and turns over £4m annually, which he's aiming to bump up to £6m within two years.
Clients include design agencies and blue-chip household names covering manufacturing, national high-street chains and well-known associations.
“The need to speed up production was a key factor in our decision to invest in the Komori H-UV curing system,” he explained.
“In particular, we needed to minimise the typical drying issues associated with printing on uncoated materials, the use of which continues to increase.”
“We do a fair amount of uncoated work but were losing more because we could not dry fast enough. On a traditional press with heavy coverage we sometimes had to wait a week to fold.
“We'd also have to regularly clean the rollers on the folder. But with with the H-UV drier we can run 100,000 items through the rollers and there's not a mark on them.”
Clients include publishers and Denne added the high gloss levels now achievable inline on covers with the H-UV process could eliminate the need for publishers to specify additional lamination.
“This translates into faster turnarounds for us and potential cost savings for our customers. On the previous Lithrone S540 we’d expect to put around 6,000 sheets an hour on the floor.
“With new Komori’s faster makeready systems and running speeds, that’ll step up to over 10,000. And the immediate drying benefits of H-UV curing means we can move jobs to finishing faster.”
Denne said the solar panels generated 250kW hours a day, enough to power all the presses and production office and still send some back to the National Grid.
“The solar panels strengthen our commitment to be a green printer and our ISO 14001 accreditation supports our credentials.”
As part of the deal, the panels' supplier paid to have leaks in the roof repaired and insured the roof for ongoing repairs for 20 years. A re-roofing job would have cost Denne £70,000.
Sales director Paul Rolls said: “We have already shown our major clients including a number of design agencies samples of previous jobs printed on our new H-UV press for comparison.
“They’re really excited about both the superior appearance particularly on uncoated papers as well as the additional high-gloss and drip-off options we can now provide.
“Additionally, we already print some lighter weight packaging and, as the H-UV Lithrone will easily handle the heavier carton stock weights, we see potential to expand this side of the business.”
Rolls added: “For us, the wow-factor with the H-UV curing system was initially delivered on Komori’s demonstrations at Ipex 2014.”
