Designed to accommodate an image area of up to 559x762mm and run at speeds of 1,700iph, the EHG series half-sheet press is suitable for stock ranging from onion skin to paperboard.
The device was fully remanufactured at the Kluge facility in St Croix Falls, Wisconsin, US and delivered with an optional feature called the EZ load magazine.
This enables the operator to lower and raise the height of the entire magazine with the turn of a switch. The Kluge, which cost more than £80,000, was installed three weeks ago and is in addition to existing kit.
Launched in 1950, Murrays relocated from London to Milton Keynes almost 30 years ago and offers litho, digital and wide-format marketing material for agencies and the automotive sector.
Sales and marketing manager James Chard said: “We purchased the Kluge EHG to enable us to bring die-cutting, foiling and embossing in-house.
“These are all processes that previously we were outsourcing and with ever-increasing pressures on delivery times, we were finding these processes were causing bottlenecks in production.
“By taking control we are able to turnaround jobs even faster and there are now very few jobs that will need to leave the shop floor before going out for delivery.”
Chard added: “The thing that really impressed us was the foiling and embossing. We always found when we sent it out that our customers had never been overly impressed with the results.
“But the Kluge creates a really crisp and deep finish that we hadn't really seen on other machines. It fits in nicely with what we do, lots of high-end work.
“We didn't really outsource that much, as we didn't push the service. But now we've brought it in-house we will target much more of this type of work.”
Murrays the Printers has 15 staff and a turnover of £1.5m. It also operates a Heidelberg Speedmaster 72 and a Speedmaster 52, an HP Indigo 5600 and a wide-format HP Latex 255.
Chard said: “We hope to increase turnover gradually: we are not looking for a rapid jump. The Kluge perfectly complements the other range of finishes produced in-house and allows us to push out into more specialist and luxury markets.”
