Business is booming for the short-run carton packaging printer in Elland, West Yorkshire; managing director Richard Martin declared: “Business is fantastic at the moment, I just wish we could have an eighth day in the week.”

Falconer serves the pharmaceutical, health, cosmetics, luxury gifts and drinks markets and Martin said all sectors were growing. “I don’t know why, but ever since the Brexit vote last year we just seem to have got busy. It’s like someone turned a tap on.

“There is some new business but mostly it’s existing clients.”

The upsurge in orders has prompted Falconer to add more capacity in the form of a five-year-old Speedmaster SX 52. “It was about half the price of a new one and has only done 20 million impressions, so it’s like new,” Martin said.

“This B3 press will mop up our short-run work,” he added.  “We needed litho quality and the smaller sheet size.”  The press was installed last week and operator training starts this week.

The company has also upgraded its Prinect workflow to version 17 to integrate with the new press, as the factory now has both B2 and B3 plate sizes. And it has replaced a 14-year-old Screen CTP device with a new Suprasetter A75 CTP with Dual Cassette Loader. 

“The Screen was a good piece of kit but basically we like dealing with Heidelberg and we’ve got Heidelberg workflow so everything ties in together,” said Martin. “We get feedback from the pressroom back to the systems which saves makeready times.”

The operators already get management information from the Shuttleworth MIS and the latest Prinect update will link in to this too.

The new Speedmaster will join an existing Speedmaster CD 74 in the company’s 1,625sqm facility. Falconer employs 50 staff and anticipates turnover will top £5m this year.