Getting his fix: MD Jon Lancaster described his quest to remove problems from the business as an “addiction”
Falkland Press has jettisoned its offline business and rebranded as internet-only Printed Easy while adding two HP Indigo 12000 HD B2+ presses plus Horizon, Kolbus and Renz finishing equipment to its arsenal.
Speaking at an open house event organised with HP and partners IFS and Premier Paper, Printed Easy managing director Jon Lancaster explained that he had become “addicted” to removing problems from the business, a process that has seen headcount at the Letchworth-based company fall from 55 to 35 in 18 months, a move away from packaging work and the decision to concentrate solely on online business.
A key enabler of the move online is an in-house developed workflow and production management system called Chronos that enables highly flexible ordering online with instant pricing for customers, while simultaneously optimising press allocation according to stock choice, sheet size and finishing requirements. The XML-based system also provides highly detailed reporting and analysis with a particular focus on waste costs as a percentage of job value. Many printers attending the event asked Mr Lancaster if he would license the workflow technology but he declined, saying he didn’t want to become a software developer for other print businesses.
Mr Lancaster explained that the problem that led to the development of Chronos was deciding which press to allocate work to. The company has a six-colour Heidelberg 106 as well as several Indigos but the break point between litho and digital varies widely according to job type, with no simple rule-of-thumb, and job allocation had been taking up to 24 hours, with a further 24 hours in prepress. The new integrated system allocates presses and routes jobs such that even perfect-bound books can be dispatched the same day if the order arrives early enough.
Already an HP Indigo house, Printed Easy now has two Indigo 12000 HD models that run at 1600x1600dpi; the new Light Light Black ink option was demonstrated, bringing cleaner shadow areas in colour work as well has very high quality mono results. HP’s Erik Brammer also showed samples of enhanced gamut print produced by double-hitting CMY primaries via an HP software module called ColorUp, and said that for some types of colour image, the Indigo EPM (CMY only) mode could produce better results as well as being faster and cheaper. Printed samples produced live during the day did seem to support this.
HP also announced various new inks for Indigo: fluorescent yellow, green and orange (as seen on the covers of Digital Printer, November 2017 issue) are now on general release; UV-activated “invisible red” will be joined by blue and yellow versions that open up the possibility of combining two or more for creative effects in marketing items such as nightclub or festival wristbands or bottle labels as well as security applications. In response to demand from wedding photographers in India, the company is also introducing Indian Pink and Green, highly saturated colours optimised to reproduce the shades found in costume, makeup and jewellery at traditional Hindu weddings.
