The British print shop installs three new Heidelberg presses and will increase its turnover by around £2m over the next five years. In a move that has the potential to see the company's turnover rise from £3.2m to £5m over the next five years, PBL Print has moved premises and installed three brand new presses.
The Washington, Tyne & Wear, company believes its investment will give it a 50% increase in capacity following the eight mile move to its new 30,000 sq ft freehold facility. It has plans to further extend the offices to give a final space of 33,000 sq ft.
All 40 staff have transferred and will benefit from a re-equipment programme that enables the company to move to Heidelberg's latest Speedmaster SX class. The new line up will include a Speedmaster SX 74-5-P+L (a B2 five-color perfector with coater) and two Speedmaster SX 52 with Anicolor, a five- and a four-color and each with a dedicated inline coater. These replace two Speedmaster presses, a straight SM 74-5 and a SM 52-4+L with Anicolor. A Printmaster PM 74-2 will be retained and transferred to the new site. To keep pace with the expanded print capacity PBL Print is also adding a third guillotine, a Polar 92X Plus, and also two more automated folders, a Stahlfoder TH56 buckle and a Stahlfolder KH56 combination model.
"We have Easy Control spectrophometry on the SX 74 and Heidelberg UK is looking at how we can have a color measurement tool on the Anicolors as well," says director Chris Murley. "Although color measurement is unnecessary from a production perspective because there is only a little manual adjustment on the Anicolor we would like something that would allow us to give customers a print out of the color levels attained thus proving that their job was run to ISO12647-2 standards. We are a member of the Heidelberg Color Club, a printer that holds the Heidelberg ISO 12647-2 certification and running to that standard remains important to us."
PBL Print provides a 24 hour, five day a week service to its customers who include several NHS Trusts and print management companies such as Communisis, Charterhouse.