OLYMPIC WIN FOR GRONHI
Irlam printer goes for gold with five colour
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Adapt to survive
Olympic Press Ltd has become the latest in a growing line of UK printers to take advantage of a low-cost high-quality Hans Gronhi press from UK distributor Printers Superstore. A five colour GH525 B3 machine is now running at the company’s brand new unit in Irlam, Manchester.
Olympic is a family run company which has embraced change, and has little fear of breaking new ground, as MD Jim Gray explains. “In order to survive, especially in today’s climate, you have to adapt. Three years ago we took our first steps into digital, two years ago we added inhouse finishing for the first time, and now we have decided to switch formats by removing our six colour B2 Heidelberg in favour of the five colour B3 Hans Gronhi.”
B3 proved the way forward
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Mr Gray says that an analysis of Olympic’s work profile showed that B3 was the right direction. “We found that 90% of our workload was better suited to B3 production,” he says. “Run lengths keep shrinking, deadlines keep getting tighter but the demand for quality never changes. We realized we needed a modern B3 offset machine to complement our digital production, and become a dedicated high quality small format printer.”
Mr Gray says the economic case for the Hans Gronhi machine extends beyond the attractive purchase price. “We found we could buy a brand new Hans Gronhi machine for less than the price of a used Heidelberg, which means low repayments, but that’s not all. The running costs are very low, thanks to low priced consumables and, most importantly, low power consumption, which nowadays should be near the top of everyone’s wish list,” he says. “When you add it all up, the Hans Gronhi machine delivers such a low cost per sheet, it narrows the gap between digital and offset production.”
"In practice we find it's a great piece of kit"
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Mr Gray continues; “When we first saw advertisements for the Hans Gronhi machine we were skeptical , but it’s got an impressive list of features which tick just about all the boxes, and when we saw it we could tell it was well engineered. We were also reassured by the fact that these machines are now becoming available on the used market, which tells us something about their quality and longevity. In practice we find it’s a great piece of kit, we use CIP data and closed loop colour correction to help get top quality quickly, and we have no complaints over the standard of work we are producing. As with any machine we had one or two issues early on but to their credit Printers Superstore responded very well.”
