Installed in mid-March, the 224 is the latest machine AD3 has purchased to support its new workhorse press, a Halm EM5 bought in January 2022.
The EM5, a specialist envelope press that prints CMYK on obverse and black on reverse, has been a star purchase for the firm.
UV-dried, the press has eliminated the need to print on one side of an envelope, wait for it to dry in the night, and then print the other side. With each envelope printed and dried in a single pass, AD3 has been able to ramp up production significantly.
Managing director Andy Martin told Printweek: “It’s saving us a lot of time and money.
“Although it was an expensive machine, it has been well worth the investment.”
Still running its older EM4 press in tandem with the EM5, the company also refreshed its two-colour capacity, replacing two 15-year-old Halm Superjets with newer models.
Martin said: “With the volume we do, and the speed we have to deal with, we needed to invest in a couple of good two-colour presses.
“The ageing ones were showing their age, and starting to cost a lot in downtime and repairs.”
Installed over the summer in 2022, the Superjets were then joined by a new Screen PlateRite 4300E CTP system in October.
AD3 had found that the increased production speed of the EM5 press, combined with the more aggressive effect of UV curing on the plates, had meant that plates were having to be replaced more frequently than ever.
Martin said: “As we’ve increased the amount of four-colour overprint we’re doing, we just felt we needed a real professional, bang-up-to-date CTP system.”
While the company had previously been getting 30-40,000 impressions from a set of plates, with the new press it had been getting just 20,000.
The new platemaker, however, has jumped run lengths up to 100,000 for for each set of plates: “The quality, too, is a whole lot better, it’s much sharper,” Martin said.
“We’re really pleased with it.”
Last to go in, the Winkler & Dunnebier four-colour has closed off AD3’s investment round. Set to just print C4, it has again saved the company a significant amount of time and money by eliminating the need for changeovers on the EM5.
“As we were getting more and more C4 work, we got the [W+D] 224, dedicated to C4. Now we have no size changes, barely any waste, we just need to change the plates and get on with the next job.
“We’ve noticed a big change in how fast we’re getting stuff off.”
AD3, a confidential trade printer, was prompted into the investment round by a combination of growth in demand – many more printers are outsourcing envelopes, Martin said – and the ready availability of CBILS cash.
The result has been AD3’s growth from £1m to £1.5m in 12 months, with 12 staff now up from seven.
He said: “We’ve been able to finance the growth in a very solid, competitive way.
“Our original idea was, if the government has given the loan, that we would take it, not touch it, then give it back after 12 months - but the way things were going, we needed to invest further in our equipment, and were able to dip into that CBILS loan to help us.”
