WEB OFFSET PRINTERDave Williams, technical director, Pindar
"It’s clearly in the gravure pitch. Looking at the litho market, you’d want to explore whether you could have two folders for added flexibility. In terms of work, it’s got to be contractual base, because you’ve got to use the width consistently and persistently, which lends itself to longer-run publication print. But what we don’t know fully is the position of paper supply into the UK and our ability to get consistently and economically large reels to support these types of presses. The other issue is that you’re looking at a €20m investment and the enthusiasm for that level of capital expenditure just isn’t there."
WEB OFFSET PRINTERVic Rollinson, sales director, Grapho Media
"The Goss Sunday 5000 is a brilliant press and there is definitely a place for it in the UK print sector, despite the current economic environment here. At 96pp, it is a really big, multi-functioning press, and it is also very flexible. For these reasons it is more than capable of competing with the gravure market here in the UK. While there are still rumours that people are reducing capacity, I think that there is always a place for a good European press in the UK print market."
DM PRINTERSimon Moore, managing director, Eclipse Colour Print
"If you look at all of the companies in the UK that could be in a suitable market to purchase a press such as this, they all have their woes. 2011 will be a very important year for these companies and an equally important year for this press. I think to justify such a significant investment, you would have to remove a large chunk of capacity in the first place. You would also have to be in a position where your existing machines had reached a time where they needed replacing. Looking at the large pagination, high-volume web marketplace as it is, I think it would be difficult to justify such an investment at present."
COMMERCIAL PRINTERPeter Alderson,
Joint managing director, Alderson Print Group
"Looking at the web offset market at the moment, anyone investing in a 96pp machine such as this would have to be bonkers. The sectioning part of the web market is the worst it has been in living history and very few companies could realistically consider the press a viable investment, save for somebody like Polestar. In my opinion, and it is just that, if you are considering moving work from gravure to web then surely most gravure machines are now paid for? They may be slower but you don’t have that level of expenditure to deal with and, anyway, we’re living in a time where margins are being squeezed and paginations are coming down."
