This shift in thinking – away from technology and process, and towards customers – is mirrored by the dramatic shift in print technologies that these printers are using. Whereas only five years ago the average large-format print shop used to have half-a-dozen screen process presses, now that same print shop is likely to have a mix of presses – some screen process, some large-format digital and even some very large format (VLF) litho presses.

A carefully balanced mix of technologies can provide a great all-round service to clients, in addition to keeping a printer’s balance sheet healthy. Toby Martin, joint managing director of Dorset-based SPS Group, has all three technologies, screen, wide-format digital and offset litho: “We did very thorough business plans to show how the whole mix of technologies works to reduce running costs overall. It helps us bring our costs down, and customers get a better quality job. It wins all round,” he says.  

The phenomenon of screen printers installing wide-format digital presses has been acknowledged in the industry for the better part of a decade now. But by and large, this move has not encroached on the territory of screen process – mainly because it has made large-format colour available at run lengths for which no printer would have dreamed of firing up a screen press, and so has developed its own market.

Appleton Signs in Southampton is a typical example of a digital-screen hybrid outfit. Managing director Luke Appleton has a raft of screen machines, including two semi-automatic Svecias, and has recently invested in a multicolour Thieme screen process machine together with two Inca Spyder digital inkjets. “They work together very well,” Appleton says. “Digital doesn’t have the costs or the time of making screens, so it mops up the shorter runs.”

Paul Flint is the sales manager at Daytona Visual Marketing in Tamworth. Over the past five years, he has noticed job turnround times becoming shorter and shorter: “We get asked for jobs same day or overnight, mostly,” he says. “First thing this morning I got artwork in for two A0 Foamex panels that need to go out tonight. We’d have had a week to turn that round five years ago, and we’d have needed it because we’d have had to print onto vinyl and mount it onto Foamex and then laminate it. Now, with digital machines, we just print straight onto the Foamex and we don’t even need to laminate because it’s a UV-resistant ink.” Daytona invested in an Inca Spyder 320 last year to relieve its screen presses of shorter runs, and Flint says the business will continue to build on digital: “The screen presses are still busy, but it’s easy to see that in another five years we’ll be doing a big proportion of digital work.”

Toys for the big boys
While adding digital to a screen line-up is an established trend, and one that holds less risk for large-format printers than formerly, installing a VLF offset press remains a move only for the big boys. Around ten of the UK’s biggest and best-capitalised large-format names currently have VLF presses, including Augustus Martin, Capital Print, SP Group (part of St Ives) and SPS. With an average investment of £3.5m, the technology is beyond the reach of even mid-sized display printers, as Toby Martin of SPS admits: “The capital is potentially very frightening – into the millions and adding a zero to the kinds of investment levels we were used to. We did a lot of sums to be absolutely sure it wasn’t going to be disastrous for us, and we’re sure of ourselves, but it’s very understandable that the majority of large-format printers won’t be wanting to go this route.”  

While the stakes are high, the returns are commensurate: printers who have installed VLF offset presses have seen their turnover and profits rise dramatically. Duncan Hesse, managing director of NSL in Newcastle, has installed a Rapida 205 at a cost of £4m to sit alongside his digital and screen presses. He says that the profit ratios are boosted by the press speed, the speed of makeready and the lower consumables cost; an added bonus is the quality produced by the Rapida, which Hesse says “far outstrips” the quality of four-colour screen process.

For large-format print shops that have a mix of technologies, determining which job should be printed using what press is complex. “You can’t decide it just on quantity,” says Daytona’s Flint. “It’s a combination of quantity, turnround time, application and quality required. Also, number of colours – if it’s a two-colour job, screen is better, but if it’s four-colour it’s usually digital because of the screen production time and costs – unless it’s more than 100 copies.”

SPS Group’s Toby Martin adds that, increasingly, clients are specifying which technology they want, which adds a further level of complexity to the decision: “Sometimes you have to ask them why they want, say, a screen print rather than a digital – they might be basing that decision on an erroneous belief that screen is better.” And for those large-format printers who have VLF offset kit, the decision is often further complicated by clients who will only accept offset litho work: “You feed them the good stuff, they naturally want it all the time,” says NSL’s Hesse.

For the future, it seems that the move towards adding new technologies to the large-format and display print shop can only grow: market drivers are to do with speed of turnround, quality and cost, and the screen process is struggling to deliver. “I see this move accelerating,” says SPS Group’s Martin. “Without a doubt we will see a two-tier market of big suppliers with all three technologies, and small- to medium-sized suppliers with a mix of screen and digital.”

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NSL GROUP: NEWCASTLE
Newcastle-based screen and digital promotional printer Norscreen relaunched itself in 2005 as NSL Integrated Print Solutions, and at the same time splashed out £4m on a KBA Rapida 205, to sit alongside its Sias and Svecia screen presses and its Inca and Idanit digital machines.

Managing director Duncan Hesse and his team consider the investment in the Rapida as “a no-brainer”, as Hesse explains. “For the first time ever, running costs for litho are comparable to our screen machines. We can produce a 100-off process-colour job on the Rapida for the same cost, and in about half an hour – whereas on the screen machines it takes three hours to turn that round, even with state-of-the-art screenmaking techniques, and the quality is much better. The decision’s practically made for you.”

The difference the Rapida has made to NSL is dramatic. Hesse says the majority of his clients now only accept litho-printed work: “70% of our work now goes through the litho press, and we’ve had a 60% increase in sales over the last ten months.”

Where does that leave NSL’s eight screen presses? Hesse says that while the company will continue to run them, he will not be making any future investment in screen: “We will make more litho investment, but screen’s gone as far as I’m concerned.”

Unless there’s some big change in the way the technology works, it’s more expensive than litho and the quality isn’t as good. It’s an open-and-shut case, I’m afraid.”