While one benefit of running alcohol-free is reducing environmental impact, there were other reasons Copson wanted to eliminate IPA. We felt we could print better alcohol-free. It’s to improve quality and reduce a source of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the press hall, he says. Printing alcohol-free is a great indicator of good process control. Alcohol is very forgiving. If you print alcohol-free, tolerances are tighter and housekeeping has to be spot on. It’s a self-policing measure.

Before embarking on such a big change to press hall practices, Copson made sure he had buy-in from the minders. We talked about it and there were concerns, but not resistance, he says. Minders had been concerned there might be increased spoilage and that they might get the blame. Copson adds: We agreed we would take it as part of the learning curve.

United effort
There were teething problems, but they were all picked up by internal quality control and reprinted with no job externally rejected and only positive comments.

The staff’s commitment included the night shift coming in one afternoon to get a handle on the project’s progress. I asked if I offered to bring alcohol back, would they go for it? They said no, they wanted to keep going, he says.

The first press to go IPA-free was a six-colour Heidel-berg Speedmaster CD 102, which since 2005 had been the firm’s test bed. Once Copson was happy with the results, the rest of the presses began a phased change, starting with one of its pair of 12-colour Speedmaster 102s in January 2007 and culminating that June with a six-colour Speedmaster 74.

Picking the right IPA-free fount was the first step, and one taken very seriously to ensure eliminating alcohol didn’t introduce more problems than it solved. The acidity of the chemistry can cause problems with the pipework and the seals on the presses, and you won’t see the problems until it’s too late, he says. Some alcohol-free founts are also irritants, and the firm wasn’t prepared to risk corrosion on its machines or the health and safety of staff, so the fount had to be Fogra-approved. In the end, Fulmar plumped for Flint Group’s Hydrofast product.

However, there was much more to moving to alcohol-free than just changing the fount. The shift has had an impact throughout the press hall, affecting the operation of the presses, inks, rollers, blankets, water and plates. After the fount, Copson and his crews took a methodical approach to optimise each component following on from the fount, starting with the rollers.

Prior to switching the fount, we’d visited our roller manufacturers to discuss what could change, he says.

Fulmar’s supplier Allmake and Bottcher worked to find the best roller compounds that were hydrophilic (water-loving) enough to pick up the increased volume of water needed, but not so hydrophilic as to cause emulsification problems. Work was also done to optimise the camber of the rollers. Initially, different set-ups were tried on each unit of the trial press to figure out which worked best. One reason for tweaking the roller compound was to ensure the pan roller was running in a sweet spot so it could be adjusted to control water uptake.

Copson then turned his attention to ink. Flint initially suggested that the K+E 912 Fulmar was using to be optimal for running alcohol-free, but then came back with a suggestion that ink 918 was showing good results on the continent for alcohol-free, although wasn’t yet available in the UK. A trip to Flint’s Stuttgart test facility convinced Copson of the benefits of 918 and also unearthed a better alcohol-free fount.

By this stage, Copson was confident printing alcohol-free but felt there were more improvements that could be made. I decided we needed a bigger interaction between our suppliers, he says. In October 2007, he brought together three Agfa people, three Flint people, including its top chemist, and one person from Bottcher to throw ideas around. They discovered that Agfa was testing a plate in Europe, Energy Elite, which was proving better for alcohol-free. Fulmar made that switch at the start of 2008. Other benefits included suppliers working more closely in areas where their products interact and understanding more about the entire process of going alcohol-free.

We found we had to push our suppliers. There was a lack of technical knowledge, he says. They couldn’t say ‘If you want to go alcohol-free, here’s what you do’, so we all had to sit down together.

Clever chemistry
After that, Copson turned back to chemistry in a bid for better consistency. As in most print shops, our presses have their own dosers and we had a different calibration on each press. We decided to introduce centralised dosing because it’s more consistent and stops minders fiddling. If you adjust the central dosing, you’ve got all the other minders on your case.

The central doser adds the fount to mains water that has been treated by reverse osmosis and then rehardened to make it less aggressive. In addition to centralised dosing, the firm also runs a Technotrans eco.clean closed-loop solvent recovery system. Running without alcohol has also meant increased attention to detail. The pH, temperature and, most importantly, conductivity are monitored and recorded on every machine. Minders say it’s a different way of working, but no more difficult once you understand the new processes and controls.

Another benefit of the switch is reducing the need to chill the fount. Previously it ran at 9ºC to reduce evaporation, but now runs at 13ºC, which has cut cooling costs and resulted in a more stable process. It has also reduced ink consumption. We get more pure colour with less ink. It’s difficult to quantify as we run so many bespoke jobs, but the profiles on press aren’t as open as you’d expect them to be.

It’s not just better colour – gloss levels have imp-roved. We have had instances where we have done away with spot UV coating because the lift is so much better. Cost and time savings for the client are huge.

Many jobs that would have taken multiple passes are now being produced in one on the long perfectors. There are also productivity benefits beyond the press hall. Copson says: Drying speed has increased. Jobs with heavy coverage can be printed one day and moved the next – that’s saving a day for high-saturation jobs. For Copson, quality boost has been the biggest benefit: I believe we’re getting a much better visual result.

Taylor is delighted with both the improved quality and environmental performance, which is in addition to ISO 14001 accreditation and steps to minimise waste. Financially, he believes it has been cost-neutral, with the savings of eliminating 10,000-12,000 litres of IPA per year along with the other associated benefits balanced out by the capital and other implementation costs. However, he implies that there is a moral rather than financial imperative behind the move.

Following on from Fulmar Colour’s experience, other firms in the group are moving to alcohol-free, with Quadracolor currently conducting trials and others set to follow.

INSPECTION LESSONS: IMPLEMENTING ALCOHOL-FREE
• Buy-in from shopfloor staff is crucial. You need to keep them informed and get their feedback
• Management needs to be totally committed and prepared to accept some teething troubles during implementation
• Strong supplier relationships are essential for getting the level of partnership needed for the switch
• Consider all the factors, not just the fount. These include inks, press settings, rollers, blankets, plates, water and operating procedures
• Take a systematic and methodical approach, ensuring you only change one variable at a time and measure and record the results
• If possible, trial on one press before rolling out across the press hall