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As recession begins to beat down the doors of the global print industry, a pocket of quiet resistance is emerging: the B3 press format is remaining steady. Buoyed by sales to digital printers, who need to augment their offering with offset's lower longer-run unit costs, and equally underpinned by continuing sales to the smallest of UK printers, who have so far been relatively unaffected by recession, B3 is - at least for now - a recession-proof zone.

This accounts for the optimism of Graphic Arts Equipment (GAE), the proud new holder of Hamada’s UK agency. Sales manager Chris Hammond believes the Japanese manufacturer’s 52cm presses have been neglected by UK printers of late, and he says GAE is looking forward to helping them rediscover them.

Hammond isn’t wrong about the neglect: Japan’s oldest offset press manufacturer hasn’t, of late, been a popular choice with UK printers. Historically agented in the UK by AB Dick, the distribution rights passed to US-headquartered Presstek with that company’s acquisition of AB Dick in 2004, where the Hamada offering overlapped with the corporation’s range of DI presses. At Drupa 2008, GAE began negotiations with Hamada to take over the agency, concluding triumphantly in October with the appearance of a B52 series machine at Total Print! Expo.

The odd couple
Hamada’s choice of GAE as UK agent seems both wise and, perhaps at first sight, odd. Wise because the 50-year-old supplier has a broad and deep acquaintance with the UK’s small-format printers. Odd because it was only last year that GAE ventured into a partnership with its now owner Litho Supplies to set up Shinohara UK, effectively the UK arm of Hamada’s Japanese rival Shinohara. With such a large finger in the B3 pie already, Hamada surely risks being the second-string option as it was in its time at Presstek?

Not the case at all, according to Hammond, whose argument could be summed up in a single word: price. “Shinohara make excellent presses, but they are very fully featured and, for that reason, comparatively expensive. We aim to offer the UK B3 sector a very cost-effective alternative at this time of economic difficulty when it can be hard to find the money for new investment.”

GAE has clearly negotiated hard with its new principal. It is able to offer a superb deal on the Japanese manufacturer’s four- and two-colour 52cm machines. Presstek had the four-colour on its books for a shade under £200,000; GAE has brought that down to £170,000. This in itself will garner significant interest from small printers. The presence of automation that covers the main productivity basics will pique that interest even further.

The Hamada B52 series begins with a single-colour, the B52L, moves up through a two-colour, then on into a four- and a five-colour with coater. It’s the two- and the four-colour that Hammond expects will be most popular in the UK. These were originally introduced to Europe in 1997 and then relaunched in 2005 with upgrades and better productivity.

EPS as standard
Both included a standard spec of a semi-automatic plate-change system (known as Easy Plate Setting or EPS) and an auto blanket wash. The B52 machines are also CIP4/JDF compatible straight out of the box, with the ability to convert pre-press data into ink key presetting. Tweaking the ink ducts on the run is also made easier by a graphic display on the off-press control console and a suction tape feeder design enables shorter set-up times. Also, included in the standard spec is IR drying, which shortens turnaround times and makes it easier to whip a pile from delivery to post-press.

But there’s no point in pretending that the B52 series machines are fully decked out. These are emphatically no-frills presses and that’s partly their glory. The biggest selling point, of course, is the price. At £170,000, it’s only £20,000 more expensive than the Sanxin press that represents the lowest investment point in the new 52cm sector. The extra money buys you the automated blanket wash, the CIP4 and the kudos, not to mention higher resale value, of a Japanese, rather than a Chinese, machine.

The B52’s top speed is just 10,000sph, which is slow compared to some of the other 52cm presses currently on the market. However, this may not matter to the target user-base, whose typical run lengths are not likely to strain the run-speed-to-makeready ratio too far in the unprofitable direction. There is no coater – that only kicks in with the five-colour B52 – and there’s not even the option to perfect. For that, Hammond says, GAE will put forward the bigger, more powerful and more fully featured Shinohara range.

One of the features that will appeal strongly to potential users of the B52 machines is the tiny footprint: Hamada claims the four-colour, at just over 2m wide by just less than 4m long, is the most compact press in the B3 bracket. And speaking of tiny, the Hamada comes as standard with a small-size kit that allows it to print single postcards at a minimum sheet size of 90x140mm.

The target market for the B52 machines is wide. For the two-colour, GAE will look to sell to start-ups mainly, or to those who need a second back-up press, For the four-colour, the company has detected a big surge in interest from digital printers who, having grown their digital customer base, are beginning to pull in jobs of too long a run length to be happily – or profitably – printed digital. This particular market will likely be recession-resistant for a while, perhaps bearing GAE and Hamada both through some of the likely bloodbath of the next 12 months. Hammond is wary of predicting too many immediate sales to printers already involved in offset, but sees potential opportunity on a single or two-colour basis for those looking to expand into multicolour – which as recently as five years ago might have made a good proportion of the potential market for this machine. “There will be some offset customers,” he says, “but in the current climate, that’s not an investment path that will be as popular as others.”

Main offering
The B52 series is the main Hamada line GAE will distribute. There’s a range of landscape-fed 365x470mm presses too, but these are mainly a Japanese format for the domestic market, and also a range of portrait-fed 34cm machines, which may slide under the radar of the UK (although Hammond says if GAE gets an enquiry, it will naturally respond). GAE will also honour the service contracts for the UK’s existing 40 or so AB Dick/Presstek-sold Hamadas and has already set aside a section of its Perivale stockholding for Hamada spares.

Hammond says GAE is “gearing up” to make an impact on the UK B3 sector. “We look forward to putting our wide knowledge of this market into use for the benefit of small printers,” he says.

SPECIFICATIONS

Max sheet size 365x520mm
Min sheet size 90x 140mm
Stock thickness range 0.04-0.4mm
Top speed 10,000sph
Price B452 (four-colour): £170,000; B252 (two-colour): £89,500
Contact Graphic Arts Equipment, 020 8997 8053, www.gae.co.uk

THE ALTERNATIVES

Heidelberg Printmaster GTO 52
The basic chassis of Heidelberg’s old favourite is 30-years-old, but it still sells into the same slot as the Hamada and costs less, though it’s slower. Optionally convertible to perfecting, one to five units, but no automation as standard.
Max sheet size 360x520mm
Min sheet size 105x180mm
Stock thickness range 0.04-0.4mm
Top speed 8,000sph
Price 52-4: from £165,000
Contact Heidelberg UK 020 8490 3500 www.heidelberg.com

Ryobi 52HE series
Ryobi’s basic two- and four-colour machine isn’t convertible to perfecting and neither does it offer a coater – for both those options there’s the flagship 520GX series – but it does have semi-auto plate changing and Ryobi’s productivity enhancing ‘Smart Printing’ feature set, plus options for plenty of other automation including ink presetting and CIP4/JDF compatibility.
Max sheet size 375x520mm
Min sheet size 100x105mm
Stock thickness range 0.04-0.4mm
Top speed 11,000sph
Price £199,950
Contact Apex Digital Graphics 01442 235236 www.apexdigital.co.uk

Sanxin YK 52 series
Sanxin’s two- and four-colour B3 machine was a surprise entrant to the UK market at Ipex 2006. The unfairly stigmatised Chinese engineering is less of an off-put than it might be when weighed against a semi-auto plate change, a fast speed, a mechanised wash-up and a price tag that’s even lower than the Hamada’s.
Max sheet size 375x520mm
Min sheet size 150x280mm
Stock thickness range 0.04-0.4mm
Top speed 13,000sph
Price YK524: £150,000
Contact Printers Superstore 0113 208 8500 www.printers-superstore.com

Shinohara 52IV
It comes in two-, four-, five- or six-colours, with an option for a coater on all the multicolours, although the perfecting ability is a separate model. It’s 50% faster than the Hamada and its automation range goes further – ink duct presetting, blanket wash, dampening pre-set and on-the-run micro-adjustment of the cylinders, but the price reflects this.
Max sheet size 370x520mm
Min sheet size 100x148mm
Stock thickness range 0.04-0.4mm
Top speed 15,000sph
Price from £210,000
Contact Shinohara UK 020 8991 6640 www.shinohara.co.uk