The firm, currently based at a 3,300sqm site in Barking, will install the eight-colour RMGT 928P SRA1 sheetfed perfecting press at its new 5,110sqm Thames Gateway factory, three miles down the road, in around August/September. The company's move across to the new site will start in July and be finished by September.
The RMGT machine, which is being supplied by Apex Digital Graphics, will provide for business continuity at the new site while an existing eight-colour RMGT 928P, installed last year, is moved across. The new press is replacing an RMGT 925 five-colour straight press, which was also installed last year and is now being part-exchanged.
“The introduction of the Ryobi platforms has been extremely successful for us,” said Precision chief executive Gary Peeling.
“We’re taking the opportunity to ease the transition into the new building by taking this new press, which will be installed and operational before we start to dismantle the presses here.”
The new press incorporates two LED-UV curing units – one situated over the perfecting device and the other at the delivery end of the machine, enabling one-pass instant-cure perfecting.
The machine handles a maximum paper size of 920x640mm, enabling the 8-up printing of A4 size pages, as well as A1 size posters. It can handle paper ranging from 0.04mm thick to 0.6mm card stock.
The press will be equipped with Smart-RPC fully automatic simultaneous plate changing to significantly reduce makeready times for job changes.
It will also be the first press in the UK to be fitted with the new PQS-D colour control and inspection system, which was shown for the first time in Europe at Drupa last year.
“This allows you to achieve and maintain colour balance very quickly. ISO colour balance and registration is all dealt with with the colour control, it really multiplies the effect of the faster drying and the baseline productivity of the machine,” said Peeling.
The LED-UV presses underpin the firm’s new service, TheColourRush. The instant drying capabilities of the RMGT machines mean the firm can now produce uncoated work same day into London, which was unachievable with conventional machines.
“The additional eight-colour is really creating capacity. After offset printing being a flatline area of revenue for us for the last five or six years, the introduction of these presses has resulted in quite significant growth so we need to have additional capacity, particularly around the faster turnarounds,” said Peeling.
“There is an appetite to have print faster and LED offset enables that to take place but it also means you need to have the capacity to enable you to fulfil the requirements.”
He added: “It’s really a result of the success of the initial investment that we need some more capacity. An eight- and a five-colour was much more than we needed in September last year and now we’re confident we will fill two eight-colours within 12 months.”
Precision Printing, which recently celebrated its 50th birthday, has 160 staff across its group, which also includes its Sunderland-based trade print service, Where The Trade Buys.
The company, which is forecasting sales of £23m in 2017, has now finished beta testing the HP Indigo 12000 that it signed for at Drupa and the machine is now fully operational. Another HP Indigo 10000, installed in 2015, will be upgraded to a 12000 in the coming months.
