The £3.7m-turnover firm is hoping to grow its business by more than 20% to £4.5m within a year as a result of the £1.3m investment.
It moved a mile over from a 1,070sqm site to its new 1,250sqm Bermondsey premises in June after its previous landlord exercised a break clause at the site the firm had been based at for four years. The company has a 15-year lease on the new building.
Kube Print decided to purchase the new five-colour-plus-coater 15,000sph press instead of going to the expense of moving its four-year-old Speedmaster XL 75, which it instead part exchanged.
The firm also looked at HUV/LE-UV technology but opted to stay with Heidelberg in order to maintain consistency and to take advantage of Autoplate Pro and Inpress Control 2.
Inpress Control 2, which was launched earlier this year, further reduces makeready time and saves a further 10%-20% start-up waste compared with Inpress Control.
“The new press, which was installed ready for our move into the new premises, is the same spec as our old press except for the fact that the previous press was a perfector. We’ve changed that because our demand for perfecting has fallen away in the last few years,” said managing director Adam Frost.
“We decided it would be a better use of our resources to invest in the Autoplate, which you get the benefit of with every job, and that’s made us 40% faster at least. The latest version of Inpress Control has also slashed our makeready times and made us very productive.”
He added: “There was a completely seamless changeover from the old press to the new press. When the move was complete, we shut down the old press, Heidelberg moved in to remove it, and we started working on the new press.”
The business also took delivery of a Ricoh Pro C5100S digital colour cut sheet printer last week, which Frost said will enable the firm to accommodate larger sheet sizes.
Last year the company purchased two Ricoh Pro C901 digital printers, a Setmaster collator, a Duplo DC-745 multi-finisher, a BQ-470 Horizon four-clamp PUR perfect binder and a Challenge CMT-330 three-knife trimmer. It also operates an HP Indigo 5500, an HP Indigo 3050, two Canon Océ 6200s and an Océ 2110.
Kube Print, which was founded in 2004 and has 34 staff, produces financial, educational and commercial print and completes some trade work.
