Apologies for the blogging hiatus, it's been one of those weeks where there simply haven't been enough hours in the day.
Yesterday it was my privilege to be included in a group of UK printers who visited the site of Mazzucchelli in Italy, famous for being the first user in the world to install the 96pp Sunday 5000 web press made by Goss. Yes, this was my much-anticipated 'coffee and shopping' fact-finding trip to Milan. I managed to squeeze in a couple of top-notch coffees, time for shopping there was none.
The press was, in its way, more beautiful than any of the designer wares on display in the shop windows of Bergamo. As a piece of engineering precision and harmonious coming together of enabling technologies (such as gapless blankets and the Goss digital inking system) it really is a stunner.
This beast of a machine is housed in what is quite possibly the most immaculate press hall in Europe. It runs 24/7 and gets through 300 tonnes of paper A DAY. Watching it in operation it's easy to see how, the thing was hammering away putting an incredible number of sections on the floor (not literally, everything was running smoothly into the inline Rima system).
What's more, it's all additional capacity at the company, which also runs a bunch of other webs including 64pp, 48pp and 32pp machines - how eye-popping is that?
Soon there will be three of these behemoths running on the continent. Mostly they seem to be eating up work previously produced using gravure. Having seen the Sunday 5000 press in action, and thinking about market trends towards [comparatively] shorter runs of versioned products, it really is hard to see why anyone would buy another publication gravure press. Ever.
Next question, will we see one here in the UK? With a price tag of circa €12m I don't have a long list of firms that could justify such an investment in the current market conditions. However, in an imaginary world where margins stack up and funding is available, one could envisage a Sunday 5000 being just the ticket for Polestar Sheffield...
