20160404-NEWS--1-NAT-CCI-CL_--
4/1/2016
3:04 PM
Page 1
VOL. 37, NO. 14
APRIL 4-10, 2016
Business of Life
MANUFACTURING: M & A Deals again should abound in 2016.
Raising horses
P. 4
REAL ESTATE: For sale?
Canton attorney is enjoying the ride
Richmond mall has murky future
P. 30-31
P. 6
CLEVELAND BUSINESS
THE DISH: Healthy gesture Edwins founder is making difference P. 13
Source Lunch Dominic Ozanne talks construction P. 32
Local printers must be up to speed on tech Companies are investing in presses that use ultraviolet light to dry ink instantly BY CHUCK SODER csoder@crain.com @ChuckSoder
Last fall, one of Scott Durham’s biggest clients made a request he couldn’t meet. They wanted his company, HKM Direct Market Communications, to print a catalog using a technique that may have a big impact on the commercial printing industry — UV curing. HKM couldn’t do it. So the Cleveland company proposed a solution that would only work once: They would give the cover of the Winter Wonderland catalog to an out-ofstate company that could hit it with ultraviolet light and make the snowflakes really shine. Then HKM would print the rest of it using a traditional coating — a coating that doesn’t quite pack the same punch. HKM won the job, but the client made it clear that they’d lose the next one if they couldn’t do UV curing. So HKM bought a new printing press that could do the job. Many other print shops are making the same decision these days, said Durham, CEO of HKM. His brother Rob is president. “That’s the trend of the industry right now. … If you don’t have it, you’re not going to be considered for a lot of jobs,” Scott Durham said. Granted, printers have been using UV light on specialty jobs for decades. Over the past eight years, however, several companies that build
commercial printing presses have released versions equipped with UV light sources that generate significantly less heat. These new machines not only use less energy, but they can also be used to dry ink on all sorts of heat-sensitive materials, like plastic. So the phrase “hot off the presses” doesn’t apply to these new machines. As a result, a growing number of print shops are reaping the benefits of UV curing: Not only does the technique produce a brighter, glossier final product, but it dries the ink immediately. No need to store the paper while it dries or apply additional coatings. So if you need to print something on the other side of the paper, you pull it out of the machine, flip it over and stick it right back in the other side, Durham said. “When something comes off this press, it’s bone dry,” he said. The UV curing capability speeds up the entire printing process, directly or indirectly. And of course, the fact that the machine is brand new helps, too: HKM’s new Komori Lithrone G40 churns out about 15,000 sheets per hour. It sits next to another Komori printing press HKM bought over a decade ago. It was running at 9,500 sheets per hour when Crain’s visited the plant two weeks ago. Thus, HKM can take on jobs that require faster turnaround times. And it will have the extra capacity to take those jobs, since the machine is so much faster than the one it replaced.
Entire contents © 2016 by Crain Communications Inc.
SEE PRINTERS, PAGE 35
The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority might discontinue weekend service for the 77F bus route that runs from downtown Cleveland to Independence. (Marc Golub)
Budget cuts bring rocky road for RTA Transit authority needs to reduce $7 million from its ledger BY JAY MILLER jmiller@crain.com @millerjh
A half-dozen members of the crowd of about 30 people who came out to Christ the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Brecksville on a recent Tuesday evening arrived, and later left, on the 77F — a bus route that runs from downtown Cleveland on Interstate 77, exits the freeway near Rockside Road in Independence and travels south on Brecksville Road before circling around a business park at Snowville Road and heading back north. The transit-dependent and the others came to hear how the plans of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority to balance its budget might affect them. Discontinuing 77F service on the weekends — a service that currently runs
MORE ON THE RTA ● Crain’s editorial: The state needs Page 10 to step up. ● More riders are using transit systems, but public funding has Page 29 steadily decreased.
hourly — is one of the possible cuts. Weekday and evening service, more frequent during rush hours, would continue unaffected. RTA is considering a number of options, including a fare increase and 17 cuts of service similar to the 77F proposal, to bring its 2016 budget into balance. General manager Joseph Calabrese told the group in Brecksville that those are the only ways he and his staff can find the $7 million they need to balance the nearly $300 million budget. “There is no easy answer to what we’re going to discuss tonight,” Cal-
abrese said, kicking off a 25-minute presentation describing the potential service cuts and the fare increase options. “Our goal in life is not to reduce service but to increase service. Unfortunately, we find ourselves in this situation because of funding cuts. It’s not a fun time at RTA.”
The state of things While the assembled riders of the 77F and other lines facing cuts would ask questions about how their rides to work, church or cultural opportunities in Cleveland would be affected, or complained about the fare increase, Calabrese’s presentation offered a brief tutorial on the sorry state of public transit financing in Ohio. That state component, he said, plays a major role in RTA’s current financial dilemma. Echoing his testimony in February before an Ohio joint legislative SEE RTA, PAGE 29