Installed on 15 January, the £240,000 SBL has already cleared out a finishing bottleneck in Raiseprint’s packaging operation, taking work off the company’s older 900sph Heidelberg Cylinder.
While the company is still getting a handle for the machine’s operation, it has been running it at operating speeds of around 4,500sph – more than enough to foil, cut and emboss the firm’s work when operating alongside its existing SBL 820SE die-cutter, also purchased through SBL importer AGM.
“It’s made a massive, massive difference,” Steve Bell, managing director of Raiseprint told Printweek.
“We did a foiling job last week where we ran it through at 4,500sph: the 15,000 volume would normally take us about two days, where now it took about five hours, it’s just a huge difference.”
Given the firm prints the bulk of its packaging on a 12,500sph Komori Lithrone G29 five-colour plus coat, having the extra finishing capacity – and flexibility to switch between cutting and special effects – has helped keep the factory running smoothly.
Raiseprint and sister company, merchandising firm The Original Metal Sign Co., both operate out of the same site with 39 shared employees. With the Lithrone, Xerox Versant 4100, a Mimaki wide-format press and finishing equipment including die-cutters, Diana gluing line, and bookletmaker for digital operations, finding space to move in the 1,400sqm site is paramount to keeping operations flowing well.
“Obviously, board takes a lot of space,” Bell said.
“When it’s not going through the factory smoothly or quickly, it piles up waiting for the die-cutting machine. Get it on the two die-cutters, and it’ll go through faster – like everyone else, we’re short-spaced, so if you get 20 or 30 pallets of card delivered, it needs to go through the machines to create that space.”
Raiseprint has kept hold of the Cylinder for the time being, but will likely soon sell it on if the SBL continues its success.
The firm has enjoyed a buoyant market as customers turn away from plastic packaging towards printed board, though Bell said that rising business costs like the National Insurance hike will mean that the first half of 2025 will be spent securing the firm’s profit margins.
“Everyone’s looking to change [away from] polyurethane – we’re looking to do it too, in The Original Metal Sign Co., because we supply those in plastic packaging,” he added.
“Now in the next six to nine months, everything will be supplied in card packaging, which is a win-win for us, because we can print it ourselves.”
Raiseprint and The Original Metal Sign Co. turn over around £4.6m between them.
