The £20m-turnover company expects to have reached £32m by the end of 2016, and considers itself to be the fastest growing printer in the UK. Annual growth has averaged around 62% over the past four years. Route One Print came 50th in this year’s Sunday Times' Virgin Fast Track 100.
The Speedmaster will be installed at the Rotherham-based company in three weeks’ time.
The purchase follows a pre-press upgrade in May this year when the firm signed a new plate deal and purchased low-chemistry plate processors and workflow software from Fujifilm.
Route One brand manager Jack Wilmott said: “We’ve been in constant talks with Heidelberg regarding what our business plans are going to be in line with our growth rates going forward. September is our busiest time of the year so generally we find we do put in new kit in the summer, preparing ourselves for then.
"With the market we are in, we deal with up to 60 makereadies per shift. Dealing with a lot of standardised print runs, it is paramount to our business that we can reduce downtime and reduce the time it takes to set up these runs.”
Wilmott highlighted the Speedmaster's Autoplate XL feature as a particular selling point. The feature can change jobs over in about two and a half minutes.
The XL also has Inpress Control, which measures and adjusts inks to maintain colour consistency. Wilmott said this was “fantastic” for the company, with nine out of 10 of Route One's customers returning.
“When you’ve got this many customers returning, they begin to get a feel for what our colour output really is, so it’s important for us to maintain that consistency. We combine this with the use of GMG software so it doesn’t matter which of our presses we print on, the colours should match.”
Route One has also purchased a bulk ink system from Technotrans Graphics. The system will feed conventional process colours and seals to the new Speedmaster and its other B2 Speedmaster XL 75. It will not feed its B1 Speedmaster SX 102, which was converted to LE-UV in mid-June.
According to Route One managing director Adam Carnell, the bulk inking should lead to an increase in output and “reduce manual intervention”.
222-staff Route One is looking to employ around 30 more staff by the end of the year.
