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The Voice Of The Industry

Volume 44 | Number 05

Nov/Dec 2012

Small Printer Wins Big Irish Print Awards Report Page 17 Also in this issue: ■ Customers See the Bigger Picture with Canon ■ Strong Start for Print Irish Promotional Campaign ■ Chinese Printers Target Irish SMEs ■ Tyrone Printer Installs Speedy Epson SureColor for Vehicle Wrap Production ■ The Irish Times Revamp ■ Promoting the Small Printer’s Passion for Print ■ Going Green Won’t Cost the Earth

Congratulations to all of the finalists and category winners from this years Irish Print Awards. Our thanks to our genorous sponsors, without whom we would not be able to continue to recognise the excellence of the work produced by the Irish printing industry. The Heidelberg Award for Sheetfed Colour Offset Printing

The Avery Dennison award for Self-Adhesive Roll Labels

New Era Packaging Ltd

Print Run Limited

The Antalis McNaughton award for Digital Print

Plus Print

The manroland Ireland award for National Newspapers

Webprint Concepts

The Reprocentre Group award for Large Format Digital Print

Select Digital Print

The Agfa Ireland award for Regional Newspapers

Celtic Media Print

The Ferag Systems award for Print Finishing

Hudson Killeen

The KBA award for Magazines

Hudson Killeen

The Irish Printer award for Graphic Design of Printed Material

Fresh Design

The Xerox Ireland award for Books

Hudson Killeen

The Reprographic Systems award for Flexographic Print

J H Label Solutions Ltd

The Swan Papers award for Annual Reports

Print Media Services

The Robert Horne Sign & Display award for Commercial Vehicle Wraps

The Uniboard award for Carton Packaging

The Printed Image

DP Imaging

The Fujifilm award for Screen Printing

The Komori/ Portman Graphic award for Small Printers

Plus Print limited

Print & Display

The Irish Printer Magazine, Print of the Year 2012 Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2011

Printed by

Print Media Services

INSIDE

VOLUME 44 NUMBER 05 Awards for excellence, whether for a service or product, are commonplace in most industries these days and they are usually an annual occurrence, providing an opportunity for professionals working in the same industry to endorse each other’s work, network, or maybe just take a night out to enjoy the company of their peers after another difficult and challenging year in business. This year Irish Printer magazine celebrated its 35th annual Irish Print Awards and it was fitting that the event returned to what many who are old enough to remember would regard as its spiritual home – The Clyde Court (formerly the Berkeley Court) Hotel. On 29 November last, Irish Printer magazine, along with all of the finalists, category winners, and guests, celebrated all that is positive about our industry. That includes the creativity, expertise and craft of the print industry. The exceptional standard of entries received this year was a testament to the continuing high level of skill that still exists in our industry, despite the pressures that have been brought to bear by the recession and by competitor technologies. The independent panel of judges, all embedded in Ireland’s print industry, were delighted at the high quality of each entry, which once again raised the benchmark for choosing our finalists, category winners and overall winner for 2012. While 2012 has underlined the challenges to our sector, it was very clear to our judges that, during a time of unprecedented economic uncertainty, companies continue to use their sense of quality to produce world-class printed matter. That is why it is so important to endorse our industry’s continued commitment to quality by publicly recognising those who are striving for and achieving excellence. As we come to the end of the fourth year of this recession, the Irish Print Awards weren’t just about recognizing a quality finished product, they were a way for Irish Printer to applaud the resourcefulness and commitment of Ireland’s print industry, which continues to overcome the obstacles and challenges faced by it every day. One of the encouraging aspects of the Irish Print Awards is the extent to which companies tend to enter year after year and, rather than satisfying a company’s appetite for success, winning a category once, or even a few times, often fuels their ambition to maintain a record of achievement in a particular category. In many cases it can motivate a print company to enter other categories as a way of highlighting their broadening field of expertise to both the industry and their customers. After all, the awards aren’t just about the night itself and a celebration of achievement – at Irish Printer we hope that they are providing the winning companies with a marketing and promotional tool that will help them to grow the business they are receiving from existing clients and attract new customers to their operation. Maev Martin Editor m.martin@jemma.ie

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Editor: Maev Martin Commercial manager: Fiona Larmon Production manager: Jim Heron Circulation: Josie Keane Administration: Marian Donohue Publisher: Frank Grennan Managing Director: Simon Grennan

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Cost Saving Print System Creates Cashless Campus Customers See the Bigger Picture with Canon Strong Start for Print Irish Promotional Campaign Printers Prove Neat Networkers Chinese Printers Target Irish SMEs OcĂŠ Celebrates Year 5 of Carbon Offset Scheme Tyrone Printer Installs Epson SureColor

Cover Story

`°Œ¿EĂ—vl ü° Ă&#x; ÂżvĂ— `vÂŤĂĽ ƒ°Ă— °ü”– v×ÛÅ ÂŤ Ell—ü—°i °Üv×–à …Û VvÂŤv– ÂƒÂ—ĂĽ ÂƒĂ—°Œ ΡĂ—v ŠvÂŤvĂ—°ïĂ› ĂĽEø vøvŒ¿ü—°Ă› EÂŤl EÂŤ EŠv–×v Eü– vl ĂĽEø `Ă—vl—ü °Âƒ kĂ­ÂˆÂ…i °Ă— kÂˆÂŹĂż ÂżvĂ— `°ï¿ vĂ… 5Eø¿EĂšvĂ—Ă› ĂŻÂŤlvĂ— Ă Â… vE׍—Š kÂˆĂżiÿÿÿ ÂżEĂš kĂ­i{ÿÿ ΡĂ—v — ĂĽEøvĂ› ü”EÂŤ ü”°Ă›v °ÜvĂ— Ă Â…i EÂŤl kçiÂ…ÿÿ ΡĂ—v ü”EÂŤ ü”°Ă›v °ÜvĂ— Ă&#x;ÿÅ Ă‘5”v `EĂ›v ƒ°Ă— —`Ă—vEۗŠ `°üחVïü—°Ă› ÂƒĂ—°Œ ÂżvÛ—°Â– vĂ—Ă› —Û VvÚ°l l—Û¿ïüv ΡĂ—E  Úi v`°°ŒÂ—`E  Ú EÂŤl ÂƒÂ—ÂŤEÂŤ`—E  ÚĂ… ĂŻĂĽ ¿° Â—ü—`E  Ú —üÔÛ Ă›vvÂŤ EĂ› ü”v Š×vEĂĽ —Œ¿vl—ŒvÂŤĂĽiĂ’ Ă›E—l °v Ă›°ïĂ—`vĂ… #——ÛüvĂ— ƒ°Ă— 3°`—E /Ă—°üv`– ü—° °EÂŤ ĂŻĂ—ü° á—  °ü E üvĂ—

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ü”v 3ĂĽEĂĽv ÂżvÛ—° — ü”v VĂŻlŠ– vĂĽi VĂŻĂĽ —Û  Â—Â&#x;v Ú ü° ü—Š”üvÂŤ ĂŻÂż ° v Â—Š—V— Â—ĂĽĂš ƒ°Ă— ü”v ”°ïĂ›v”° l ÂżE`Â&#x;EŠvĂ… °ávחŠ ĂĽEø vøvŒ¿– ü—°Ă› EÂŤl `Ă—vl—üÛ ƒ°Ă— ° lvĂ— Âżv°Â– ¿ v —Û E Ă›° Vv—Š `°Ă›Â—lvĂ—vlĂ… EŒ° 5—ŒŒ—Û °Âƒ Šv `ü—° Ă—v EÂŤl Ă›E—l ` E—ŒÛ °Âƒ ÂżvÛ—°vĂ—Ă› Vv—Š ĂŻÂŤĂ›`Eü”vl ávĂ—v ї  Â–Â—ÂŤÂƒ°Ă—ÂŚvlĂ’Ă… Ă‘5”vĂ—v EĂ—v ÿÿiÿÿÿ ”°Œv– ”v ¿ ”°ïĂ—Ă› Vv—Š `ĂŻĂĽĂ… 3°Œv EĂ—v — l—×v `—×`ïŒÛüEÂŤ`vÛÅÒ 5Â?r ÂĄrÂŚĂŠ ÂŤ _ĂŠĂ Ă– EÂŚi Ă Eò Â?’šrĂ– $ÂŤÂŤÂŚEÂŚ ÂĄĂŠĂ–Ă _Â?ÂŤÂŤĂ–r Ă’ÂŤÂĄe ÂşE†r ç

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Media Focus

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ĂĽvĂ—ÂŤEü—°E  Úi ”v Ă›E—lĂ… 5”v ÂżEv– l—Eüח`—EÂŤĂ› ° ü”v Ă—vܗvá Š×°ï¿ ávĂ—v ÂƒĂ—°Œ Ă—v EÂŤl ° Úi — `°Â– ĂĽĂ—EÛü ü° ¿×vܗ°ïĂ› Ă—vܗváĂ› á”—`” ĂŻĂ›vl —üvĂ—ÂŤEü—°E vø¿v×ü—ÛvĂ… #——ÛüvĂ— ƒ°Ă— vE ü” EÂŚvĂ› 1v—  Ú —Û vø¿v`ĂĽvl ü° Ă—v`°ŒÂ– ÂŚvÂŤl ü° EV—vĂĽ ü”EĂĽ ü”v ¿×°Âžv`ĂĽ Vv  °`EĂĽvl EĂĽ 3ĂĽ EÂŚvÛÔÛi ü”°ïŠ” ü”v Vï— l—Š ÂŚEĂš Vv ÂŤvEĂ— ü”v °°ŒVv ”°Ă›ÂżÂ—ĂĽE Ă… ``°Ă—l—Š ü° ü”v V°EĂ—l ÂŚvΡi E ÂƒÂ—Ăśv–ÚvEĂ— lv EĂš á°ï l

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Wide Format

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Producing Banners Isn’t Just About Printing - Cover-Up’s Anthony Byrne talks about their eye catching banner advertising The Gathering at Dublin Airport

Recession Busters

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This month Irish Printer talks to Co Kildare-based Donovan Printing Ltd’s print and design manager Eugene Donovan about the company’s diversification strategy, online investment plans for 2013, and why he believes SMEs outside Dublin are not getting the support they need from the industry’s representative bodies.

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Irish Printer reports on an Efficiency Resource Workshop, run by Enterprise Ireland and the Print and Packaging Forum, which showcased resource efficiency measures that have been implemented by the print and packaging sector in Ireland, including Chesapeake in Westport, Co Mayo and Webprint Concepts in Cork.

E mail: (editorial) m.martin@jemma.ie, (sales) f.larmon@jemma.ie Subscription Order Line: Tel: +353 1 214 7920 Order Online: www.irishprinter.ie No part of Irish Printer may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form without the prior permission of Jemma Publications.

Printed by Walsh Colour Print

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We report on this year’s Print of the Year award winner and on all of the category winners in the Irish Print Awards 2012. We’ve included a selection of images from a night that celebrated the very best that Ireland’s design and print community has to offer.

°Œv í–Ă&#x;Ă… >°Ă— l {–¡ÿĂ… Ă—ĂĽĂ›M lvEĂ› ¡¡Ă… —ƒv ¡çĂ… &¿——° ¡ÂˆĂ… vĂĽĂĽvĂ—Ă› ¡Â…Ă… Ă—°Ă›Ă›á°Ă—lĂ› ¡à Ă… 5= ¡{Ă…

Jemma Publications Ltd. Broom House, 65 Mulgrave Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, Republic of Ireland Tel: 00 353 1 214 7920 Fax: 00 353 1 214 7950

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Irish Print Awards 2012 17

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°Œ¿ vü—° °Âƒ ü”v ÂŤvá ÂŤEü—°E Üv °¿ŒvÂŤĂĽ °EĂ—lĂ… `”— lĂ—vÔÛ ”°Ă›ÂżÂ—ĂĽE á—  Vv lv– &ÂŤ ü”v vĂśv °Âƒ EV—vĂĽ `°Ă›Â—l–  EĂšvl VĂš EĂĽ  vEÛü í¸ ĂšvEĂ—Ă› —ƒ ü”v vĂ—Eü—° °Âƒ ü”v —ÛÛïv ü°Œ°Ă—Ă—°ái #EĂĽvĂ— —Û °ü `”°Ă›vÂŤ EĂ› ü”v  °`E– ü”v ”vEl °Âƒ ü”v #EĂĽvĂ— V—l ĂšvÛüvז ü—°i ü”v °ÜvĂ—ÂŤÂŚvü–E¿¿°Â—ü– lEĂš  EĂŻÂŤ`”vl EÂŤ EŠ×Ú EĂĽĂĽE`Â&#x; vl Š×°ï¿ lvĂśv °¿Â—Š ü”v ° ü”v Ñ۔EÂŚV° Â—`Ă’ ¿×°`vÛÛ ƒ°Ă— ¿×°Âžv`ĂĽ ”EĂ› áEĂ—ÂŤvlĂ… Ă›v v`ü—Š ü”v ۗüvĂ… /Ă—°Âƒ Ă—vÂŤlEÂŤ 5”v `°Ă›ĂĽ °Âƒ Œ°Ü—Š ü”v —Û vĂš Ă›E—l ÂŚEĂĽĂĽvĂ—Ă› Ă‘Ă—vE`”vl E ¿×°Âžv`ĂĽ ÂƒĂ—°Œ ü”v #EĂĽvĂ— ü° E°ü”– ÂŤvá  °áĂ’ á—ü” ü”v  vEÂ&#x;—Š  EÛü vĂ—  °`Eü—° —Û k¡íÿ–¡ÂˆĂż Œ—  Â—°i ávvÂ&#x; °Âƒ ü”v Ă—v¿°Ă—ĂĽ °Âƒ ü”v ° Â–

6 7 8 11

There is now a multitude of digital mobile devices on which consumers can access and read newspapers. The challenges that these have and continue to pose for the newspaper industry are well documented. This month The Irish Times took the first in a series of steps towards refreshing its product offering. Maev Martin reports.

*²á™­Â? f–™¢pĂ™y­Ă–Ă? –²Ă?à ™çL¢ Ă?™çy f²ð¢p f²Ă?ç ošÂ‹Ä€¨ / 7 7 $ sFÂœĂĄÂ? ÂŹĂ“Ă“sĂ—§js§å

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Is the Industry Optimistic About 2013? - As we face into a fifth year of the recession, Irish Printer talks to some well known industry players to get their views on the likely outlook for our sector

Green Business

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News

Irish Printer November/December 2012

NEWS

Cost Saving Print System Creates Cashless Campus

Fiona Harrison, sales manager, Kopikat, and Dave Curran, IT manager, IT Blanchardstown

Business and print equipment supplier, Kopikat, has implemented a new cost saving print system for the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown. The new solution will see the third-level college implement a campus-wide cashless print management system. ITB currently has 3,000 fulltime students, 90 academic staff, and 85 administration and management staff. It is the newest institute of technology in Ireland. Due to a concern about holding cash on campus, ITB tendered for an integrated software solution to manage its print system and replace the old printing cards, with a new web-based payment system using smart card technology. Kopikat won the tender and provided a Ricoh Equitrac office print management and cost recovery solution. This will facilitate the use of smart cards for the student population, in addition to helping the college meet sustainability objectives and reduce the costs associated with printing. The new solution enables

students to log-on to an online payment service where they can top up their smart cards using a credit or debit card. Students simply charge their print jobs to the smart card, removing the need for any cash to be held by the college for printing. The comprehensive suite of reporting and audit tools included in the Ricoh Equitrac solution is helping the IT department to have greater visibility over all photocopy and print activities at the college and ensure the highest quality of service is provided. The ‘Follow You’ mechanism of the new solution allows students and academic staff to securely print documents at the device closest to them. Security was a major factor in the decision to implement this system, not only to remove cash from the college but also to ensure the confidentiality of documents. Documents cannot be released for printing until the individual swipes their card at a printer. For academic staff this is particularly beneficial in order to ensure the privacy of material such as exam papers or

student grades. The new solution is also helping the college reduce its carbon footprint, through reduced volumes of unwanted or unclaimed prints. Documents that are abandoned in the print queue are automatically deleted after a certain amount of time. Quotas are also in place for colour copying and a focus on duplex only print settings further supports the college’s sustainability goals. By using the Ricoh Equitrac system, students are also saving money as they are more aware of their printing usage and costs. Instead of printing entire documents,

they are now only printing the sections they need. ‘Since implementing the new system, we have seen immediate benefits through reduced cost of printing and a more streamlined management of our entire print network,’ says Dave Curran, IT manager at IT Blanchardstown. ‘We are so pleased with the success of the new cashless print system that we are looking to extend the smart cards to include other services such as estate management, the canteen, shop, and potentially, time and, attendance.’

Realt’s Award-Winning Range Realt Paper’s recently launched Events Range of prestige quality papers, board and matching envelopes featured strongly at this year’s Irish Print Awards. The gold envelopes from Realt Paper’s Events range carried those all-important cards with the names of each of the category winners and, of course, the overall Print of the Year winner. The Events range is ideal for corporate events, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, menu printing and business cards and includes pearlescent, laid, pinstripe, marble, embossed, translucent and handmade papers. The range also includes white and tinted card, and chrome and metallic envelopes.

Irish Printer November/December 2012

NEWS

Customers See the Bigger Picture with Canon Following the publication this year of Canon’s latest Insight Report, The Bigger Picture:Your Customers’View of the Value of Print, Canon UK recently hosted a series of customer forums focused on the research. The forums, which took place in London, Reigate, Birmingham and Dublin, gave Canon customers the opportunity to discuss the research and explore the ways in which it can help them to grow their businesses. The Bigger Picture was commissioned by Canon with the aim of helping Print Service Providers (PSPs) to understand better what print buyers actually want, thus equipping them better to meet their customers’ needs more effectively, grow their own businesses and help to grow those of their customers. The research covers five main topics: the value of print to print buyers, how print buyers choose a print provider, how print buyers use print, how print buyers see their future

use of print and opportunities for print providers. ‘We had an overwhelmingly positive response to The Bigger Picture research from our customers at drupa earlier this year and this was echoed in the feedback we’ve been receiving from customers after these forums,’ says Andy Harris, European & UK graphic arts customer marketing, professional print solutions, Canon Europe. ‘Canon is not only highlighting the need for PSPs to build more consultative relationships with their customers, we’re also working with them to help them do this through initiatives such as the Essential Business Builder Program and business mentoring. We look forward to seeing growing numbers of PSPs using the insights to improve communication with their customers and grow their businesses.’ 420 print buyers across 18 European countries were interviewed for the Insight Report. Respond-

ents from the following five sectors were interviewed: manufacturing and primary industry; retail and wholesale; finance and business services; marketing and communications services; public,

voluntary and other. The research comprised two phases of interviewing, a quantitative survey of 420 print commissioners followed by 30 in-depth interviews with regular print buyers.

Strong Start for Print Irish Promotional Campaign The Print & Packaging Forum’s series of events to encourage participation in their Print Irish initiative is bearing fruit. A direct mail campaign, which combined print, personalisation and QR codes, was issued on 23 October. The campaign, which was co-ordinated by Kevin Byrne and David Little, targeted suppliers and print and packaging firms. In addition, an element of the personalised campaign was aimed specifically at government and the media in order to communicate the importance of the sector to Ireland’s economic development. ‘We sent out 350 individualised mailshots in total so as well as getting the message out there about the Print Irish campaign, the mailshot itself demonstrated the flexibility of print and what it can achieve,’ says Kevin Byrne. ‘Of the 350 mailshots, 250 were sent to print companies from around the country. There will be a follow up mail campaign so other printers will be targeted. We are happy with the response that we have got from our

initial direct mail campaign. While it hasn’t generated any new Print Irish members so far, it has led to a couple of lapsed members rejoining the initiative. In addition, a number of designers who also do some print broking have subscribed and committed to working with Print Irish printers so that is a very positive development. Judging by the feedback that we have got from this direct mail campaign, people in our industry, as well as print buyers, want to be seen to be giving business to Print Irish firms.’ This direct mail campaign is the first in a series of promotional activities that the Forum is rolling out to increase awareness of and encourage subscription to the Print Irish campaign. ‘For example, I participated in a lunchtime business show on Dublin City FM 30 November and we will be organising another targeted mailshot to ensure that we maintain the momentum that we have achieved to date,’ says Kevin. ‘In addition, the Print Irish Focus Group, which was

established in October and includes a crosssection of the industry, will present an award to the Print Irish Printer of the Year on 25 January in the National Print Museum in Dublin. This award will be based on work submitted by printers who are part of the Print Irish campaign and which carries the Print Irish logo. As well as highlighting the type of work that is being printed with the Print Irish logo, the event will be an opportunity to reward those printers who are supporting the campaign and, by extension, Irish jobs.’ Being a part of the Print Irish campaign allows printers to carry the distinctive Print Irish identity on all work produced domestically. It also allows printers to become part of a bigger initiative with common marketing and shared resources becoming available to focus the attention of those buying print domestically on the services provided by the local marketplace.

Irish Printer November/December 2012

NEWS

Printers Prove Neat Networkers Printers are one of the top five professions to benefit from joining networking groups, according to recent figures released from the world’s largest networking organisation, BNI. www.bni. eu/ireland The printing industry is still fighting hard to compete with devices such as iPads and Kindles as for many sectors visual onscreen presentations and downloadable content are replacing the ‘hard copy’ printed format. Yet, many printing companies in Ireland are overcoming these challenges, beating the recession and pushing out their competition by snapping up places at networking meetings. Of the top 50 professions in the UK and Ireland, which includes accountants, electricians and solicitors, in the last 18 months, printers have become the fourth most likely business to join a business networking group. ‘Networking isn’t just about meeting people; you learn how to build long-term relationships with qualified business prospects that generate business referrals,’ says Charlie Lawson, national director of BNI. ‘You also develop a unique support system which is equally important. Many people find that they don’t just make money from business generated through networking; by listening to business advice from their networking colleagues, they also save money.’ Referral marketing is coming into its own - both face to face and through online sites such as LinkedIn. As the economic downturn has intensified, more businesses, specifically printers, are turning to word of mouth marketing to boost their sales and

Charlie Lawson, national director of BNI

it is working. Andy Hunter, managing director at London based PrintHouse Corporation has been a member of his local networking group since 2006. Like many networkers, Andy believes that being part of a structured networking organisation has given PrintHouse Corp the edge during an uncertain economic climate. ‘A one-off print project for a new client is always good, but it is the repeat business gained by developing and maintaining long-term customer relationships that we benefit from the most,’ he says. ‘Some of our best repeat business has been generated through networking. The support and knowledge of the people in our networking group has also made an appreciable difference to our business. A few years ago a new printing press purchase and installation, at a total cost of half

a million pounds, was made possible with the help of a 6% grant obtained using the direct advice of a networking colleague.’ Networking groups don’t just offer members a formal place to meet new business contacts either; they also provide powerful training events both on and offline which can include how to get more prospects to talk to you and how to convert these into real business. To visit your local networking group, go to: www. bni.eu/ireland BNI helps SMEs build better businesses by encouraging groups of like-minded business people to actively generate valuable business referrals for one another, share knowledge, expertise and even resources in a spirit of collaborative, selfless enterprise called ‘Givers Gain’. BNI members meet every week, in towns and cities

Ricoh Europe Joins Two Sides & Print Power

across every region of the UK and Ireland, on designated days at breakfast or lunchtime meetings where qualified business referrals are passed between each group’s members. Training, best practice and invaluable strategic advice are shared among members with the emphasis on building better businesses together. All business referrals exchanged between BNI members are tracked to ensure that they are turned into real business. The BNI business referral and networking organisation has thousands of members across 48 countries and over 13,000 members in the UK and Ireland. Each BNI Group (chapter) can only have one person representing each profession/discipline – this guarantees all prospective new business will be given to that person exclusively.

Ricoh Europe is the latest organisation to join Two Sides and Print Power. Two Sides promotes the responsible production and use of print and paper and dispels common environmental misconceptions by providing users with verifiable information on why print and paper can be an attractive, practical and sustainable communications medium. Print Power complements this by focusing on brand owners and media decision-makers and informing them about the proven effectiveness of print as a vital communications channel in a multimedia world. ‘Ricoh’s participation is further proof that the campaigns we are running are being embraced by all parts of the graphic communications value chain,’ says Martyn Eustace, director of Two Sides and UK country manager for Print Power. ‘We’re currently having great success, supported by magazine and newspaper publishers, with our £2.5m ‘No wonder You Love Paper’ campaign, which is aimed at changing consumer perceptions about print and paper’s sustainability. The Print Power magazine, which promotes print’s unique effectiveness as part of multi-media campaigns, is now established as a must-have magazine for brand owners and media decision makers.’

Irish Printer November/December 2012

NEWS

Chinese Printers Target Irish SMEs Chinese printer manufacturer Pantum recently launched its monochrome laser printers, the Pantum P2000 and P2050, in Ireland and the UK. The Pantum printers are now available for purchase in Ireland through office products distributor Spicers. Part of the Chinese group, Seine Technology Co. Ltd, Pantum is China’s first OEM to launch into the printer hardware and consumable industry. The company is aiming to become one of the world’s top five printer manufacturers within the next few years through consistent investment and long-term commitment to the printing industry. The Pantum P2000 and P2050 are just the start of a programne planned throughout 2013/2014.

The printers have a printing speed of 20 pages per minute, with a high monthly duty cycle of up to 20,000 sheets, and are available in white/grey (P2000) or black (P2050) and last for up to 100,000 pages. ‘With the P2000 and P2050 printers Pantum is dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized businesses with time-saving and affordable printing solutions,’ says Jackson Wang, chief executive officer at Pantum. The Pantum laser printers have been available in the UK through office products distributor Spicers and via pan-European distributor ACI since the end of October, with a recommended retail price of £59.99 including VAT.

Landa Releases White Paper on Nanographic Printing Landa recently announced the publication of a white paper providing insight into the Landa nanographic printing process, also known as nanography. Landa claims that the technology combines the versatility and short-run economics of digital printing with the qualities and productivity of offset printing. The white paper highlights how nanography differs from other printing technologies. It employs Landa NanoInk colourants, which are proprietary water-based inks with nanopigment particles that are merely tens of nanometers in size. Topics covered in the white paper include the characteristics and limitations of current digital printing technologies, the unique properties acquired by materials when reduced to the size of nanoparticles, a description of Landa NanoInk and the nanographic printing process, the special characteristics of dots printed with Landa NanoInk, and the transfer of the printed image to any substrate. The white paper also explains how the nanographic printing process can yield the lowest cost-per-page of all digital printing technologies. ‘The white paper is designed to both educate the market on the nanographic printing process and highlight the economic advantages and eco-friendliness of the technology,’ says Gilad Tzori, Landa vice president of product strategy. ‘It also demonstrates our commitment to provide our customers with information on an ongoing basis as we continue the work on product development and bring the presses to full commercial availability.’ The nanographic printing process white paper can be downloaded from the Landa website at www.landanano.com/white-paper

THINKING OF UPSKILLING OR RETRAINING IN A SPECIFIC AREA? Are you thinking of making a change in your career? Maybe you’ve been thinking of upskilling or retraining in a specific area? Is it time to broaden your skillset in new media and widen your employment options? The Design, Print & Packaging Skillnet offers subsidised and accredited training for advertising and marketing professionals and we can tailor any programme to suit you or your company’s needs.

DIGITAL MEDIA / DIGITAL MARKETING / SOCIAL MEDIA / SOCIAL MARKETING / NEW MEDIA / ONLINE ADVERTISING / DESIGN / MANAGEMENT + LEADERSHIP / CUSTOMER CARE / CREDIT CONTROL Our courses are full or part-time and range from one day to two year programmes depending on qualification offered. Skillnets is a government funded initiative and as such all courses are subsidised and at highly competitive rates. Get in touch today to find out how we can help your company benefit from our accredited training programmes.

CALL DIANE ON 086 852 0893 OR EMAIL INFO@DPPSKILLNET.IE AND LET US KNOW YOUR TRAINING NEEDS The Design, Print & Packaging Skillnet is funded by member companies and the Training Networks Programme, an initiative of Skillnets Ltd. funded from the National Training Fund through the Department of Education and Skills.

Irish Printer November/December 2012

NEWS

Océ Celebrates Year 5 of Carbon Offset Scheme

(l-r) Océ’s Malcolm Glynn with Shining Earth’s Gareth Pickles and Roger Griffiths in Goltho Wood, Lincolnshire, which has benefited from the Océ and Shining Earth strategic alliance.

Océ celebrated the fifth anniversary of its Carbon Positive Plus+ environmental programme for the printing industry in October 2012. Océ, now a Canon Group company, formed a strategic alliance with Shining Earth, the sustainability division of Lincoln-based Delta-Simons, to pursue its objective of improving environmental performance in the print sector. The two companies developed the Carbon Positive Plus+ scheme for the Océ VarioPrint 6000 series of printers, which involved benchmarking the printing systems’ energy consumption and operational CO2. Under the scheme, Shining Earth measured the energy consumption of the range in all

its key functions and operating modes and determined the CO2 released from energy used over the lifetime of the machine in customer-specific circumstances. On behalf of Océ, Shining Earth offset 200% of the CO2 for each of the VarioPrint 6000 machines sold. Five years on, Shining Earth has facilitated procurement of verified carbon offsets for every Océ VP6000 machine installed since the Carbon Positive Plus+ scheme was launched. The total carbon offsets placed under the scheme equate to 12,175 tonnes of CO2. This is the equivalent of filling the O2 arena more than twice over, 2,709 Olympic swimming pools or driving from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back 27

times or 7,609 passengers flying from London Heathrow to New York. ‘The Carbon Positive Plus+ programmme has been driven by climate change and demands for more advice on environmental issues from Océ customers,’ says Bron Curley, managing director of Océ UK. ‘Being able to help our clients with their environmental aspirations and responsibilities has helped differentiate Océ as a responsible partner to the printing industry. Working with Shining Earth on the Carbon Positive Plus+ programme has been a great experience the figures speak for themselves.’ Of the 12,175 tonnes of CO2, 9,476 tonnes have been offset through The CarbonNeutral

Company, split between a mix of methane capture and renewable energy projects across the globe, including the Rhine Ruhr Waste Gas Project in Germany, the Shangyi Manjing Windfarm in China and the Guizhou Hydro Power in China. The remaining 2,699 tonnes have been sequestered through the Woodland Trust’s ‘Woodland Carbon’, through the planting of just over 13,500 trees. As part of the alliance, Shining Earth has identified ways for Océ UK to improve its own business environmental performance and substantial improvements and cost savings have since been made with regard to energy and fuel consumption.

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NEWS

Irish Printer November/December 2012

EFI Awarded First Ever ‘Perfect’ Accreditation for PDF RIP A series of tests run by the VIGC, the Flemish Innovation Centre for Graphic Communication, has revealed that PDF RIP output is making significant strides forward in terms of reliability and predictability. The organisation ran its latest round of testing in the run-up to Graph Expo. EFI registered the first ever ‘Perfect’ accreditation. Two other systems land the ‘Passed’ accreditation. ‘Thorough testing is of the highest importance, as our RIP tests have repeatedly proven,’ says Eddy Hagen, general manager at VIGC. ‘Users don’t always realize the complexity of actually delivering predictable results results that look exactly the same on any system.’ ‘The correct rendering of a very broad set of PDF/X-4 features is an important part of our VIGC PDF RIP tests,’ says Didier Haazen, senior consultant and PDF specialist at VIGC. ‘By testing even the smallest details, we sometimes find unexpected problems. These have to be cleared before a certain rendering can be considered correct or wrong. Also, we find that certain work methods that prove to be useful in one way, may cause differences in other ways. So, for the past few months, we have been on an important but sometimes difficult mission with a number of suppliers. However, having one system now with a “Perfect” score has certainly been the cherry on the cake for us.’ VIGC’s coveted ‘Perfect’ accreditation is for systems that render everything as expected. Meanwhile the ‘Passed’ accreditation is awarded to systems that correctly output common test patches, but render some elements in nonCMYK blending colour spaces differently than expected from the Altona Test Suite Version 2. The first series of tests were conducted in the run-up to drupa, when seven systems were awarded the ‘Passed’ label.

In the second round of testing conducted ahead of Graph Expo, EFI was awarded the first ‘Perfect’ score for its Fiery FS100 Pro RIP, which is set for release in Q1 of 2013. Two other systems also received the ‘Passed’ accreditation. ‘EFI leads the industry in digital printing color technology and color management,’ says John Henze, vice president of Fiery marketing for EFI. ‘Being the first and only digital front end to earn this VIGC PDF RIP 100% compliant certification proves our ability to also accurately render transparency and process JPEG2000 compression and 16bit images to achieve the graphic designer’s true intent. Print providers using a Fiery digital front end can have confidence that the job will print correctly the first time, avoiding costly reprints, delivery delays, and dissatisfied print buyers.’

Awarded systems

The following systems have been awarded with a VIGC label: Perfect: •EFI Fiery, version FS100 Pro Passed: •Agfa :Apogee Prepress v8 (AP 8.0.0b3) •Océ: PRISMAsync Color Controller Version 13 Earlier this year, the following systems were also awarded a ‘Passed’ label: •EFI - XF v4.5.5 •Esko - Esko Suite 12 •FujiFilm - XMF v4.1.0.6 •GMG - ColorProof v5.3.1.97 •Heidelberg - Prinect 2011 SR1 •Kodak - Prinergy 5.2.2.2 •Xeikon - X800 Digital Frontend ‘By conducting these RIP tests VIGC really aims at making sure that graphic arts companies can output PDFs in a reliable and predictable way – especially PDF/X4 files,’ says Eddy Hagen. ‘This new series of RIPs passing our tests, and even having a first “Perfect” score proves that reliability, and therefore predictability, has indeed improved.’

Irish Printer November/December 2012

NEWS

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Tyrone Printer Installs Speedy Epson Surecolor for Vehicle Wrap Production Ballygawley, Co Tyrone-based Impact Graphics installed the Epson SureColor SCS30600 printer in August to print vehicle wraps. The machine was supplied by Belfastbased Epson ProSign reseller Denis D Evans who is selling the SureColor S series of printers in Ireland. ‘This is the first SureColor SC-S30600 that we have sold,’ says Frank Wilson, general manager of Denis D Evans. ‘We are about to launch our website with details on the other two models in the range and we will have a demonstration model available in early 2013.

We will have those models available for sale shortly after that and we will be starting off with an introductory offer. We have had quite a few enquiries about the SureColor range and we are hoping to convert those into sales. Impact Graphics invested in the SureColor SC-S30600 based on the initial cost, which was very competitive, and because of the printer’s ability to print on media that is 1.6 metres wide. Impact Graphics also invested in a Summa vinyl cutter, which we also supplied as part of the package we offered.’

Gareth Donnelly set up Impact Graphics in 2008 to make and apply graphics for vehicles, mainly lorries. ‘The best features of the new Epson SureColor SC-S30600 are the 64-inch width and its speed – the printer can generate over 29 square metres of print an hour,’ says Gareth. Apart from the new Epson wide format printer and the new Summa vinyl cutter, Impact Graphics also operates a Summasign D610 cutter, a Gerber Odyssey vinyl cutter, Mutoh Ultima cutter and a Roland VersaCamm SP540v 54-inch eco solvent printer/cutter.

■Media Round Up Independent News & Media (INM) is ramping up a series of market trials, tests and interviews with retailers and readers before deciding on whether or not to abandon the broadsheet edition of the Irish Independent. The company has begun conducting retail ‘exit polls’ with newspaperbuying consumers in an attempt to measure the impact that printing only the compact, or tabloid, edition of the Irish Independent might have on sales. The Irish Independent recently became the first national newspaper in Europe to publish a series of digital magazines in conjunction with its printed products. Three special magazines were complemented by the simultaneous publication of ‘I’ versions – available for free on smartphones and tablets. The ‘I’ versions are between 50 and 60 digital pages and feature a host of extra material such as video, audio and picture galleries – all linked to the printed content. As media partner to The Gathering – the event organised to encourage visits to Ireland in 2013 – the Irish Independent published an iMagazine on Saturday, 24

November, along with a 32-page printed edition. It was followed on Wednesday, 28 November, by interactive and print versions of Mistletoe – the Irish Independent Christmas magazine. On Monday, 3 December, the Irish Independent published The Legends – a list of the 50 greatest Irish footballers of the past 50 years as chosen by their sports writers. To get access to the iMagazines readers need only type a web address or scan a QR code. The technology was trialled by Independent News & Media in September when they published an eight-page magazine on the 2012 Allianz Business to Arts Awards. A 24-page digital version, with the extra content, was available on the same day. The Gathering magazine included audio interviews with those backing the event such as RTE’s Kathryn Thomas, Ronan Keating and Bressie. The Legends magazine explained how the Irish Independent panel, which included Johnny Giles, picked their favourite Irish players. iMagazine readers could then watch a movie of Giles and the Irish Independent panel making their deliberation – and have

their say in an online poll. The Financial Times Deutschland, Germany’s second business daily and a separate entity to the British Financial Times, published its final issue on 7 December. Meanwhile, Germany’s largest media group, Axel Springer, has announced plans to follow the New York Times and launch a new paywall for its titles, including Bild and Die Welt. Axel Springer’s 2011 pre-tax profits totalled €600m, two-thirds of which were earned by its newspaper and magazine imprints but with print circulation falling and print advertising down 12% year on year in the third quarter, the media group has announced plans for a paywall. It will allow access to up to 10 free articles online, after which readers will be presented with a oneclick subscription offer. In addition, German media companies, including Axel Springer, are demanding payment each time snippets of their stories are used on aggregator websites such as Google News. A new law regulating the practice is passing through the Bundestag, with a final reading scheduled for March. Google has launched a campaign

against the law, arguing that it would mean ‘less information for citizens and higher costs for companies’. Google director for Germany, Stefan Tweraser, told media website Heise that ‘searching and finding, a basic function of the internet, would be disturbed by this law’. Google argues that it already makes a financial contribution to news organisations as its aggregator site generates traffic and consequently advertising revenue. Publishers counter that the search engine company makes more money than they do on the transaction and see the new law as an attempt to rebalance the terms of their relationship. Axel Springer public affairs president Christoph Keese said publishers wanted the final say over how long and to whom excerpts from their texts were available online. German chancellor Angela Merkel has thrown her weight behind the law, saying ‘publishing costs time and money and I can understand why protection is being demanded’. Besides Google, opposition to the law has come from internet activists, bloggers and online organisations such as Wikimedia and the Chaos Computer Club.

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Irish Printer November/December 2012

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Is the Industry Optimistic About 2013? As we face into 2013 and a fifth year of the recession, Irish Printer talks to some well known industry players to get their views on the likely outlook for our sector Brendan Ring, managing director of Cube Printing in Limerick, is reporting an improvement in their trading this year on 2011.’We moved into short-run carton work earlier this year with the installation of a Sakurai press and that has really helped our business and we hope to grow that further in 2013,’ he says. ‘Like last year, we found that the digital side of our operation has increased. I don’t know why that is but what I have found is that most of our print work is coming from companies that exporting, rather than those that are reliant on the domestic economy. Companies that are exporting into the UK and Europe, and as far away as China, Japan and the US, are providing most of our print work.’ Brendan is optimistic about the prospects for his business next year. ‘Our goals for 2013 are to retain our existing clients and to work with

those clients to provide additional services outside of print,’ he says. ‘We have spent the last two years talking to our customers about the type of service they would like to get from us and they are telling us that they want some value-added products, whether it is warehousing, or distribution, or the management of their stock in their own premises by Cube staff. We also plan to enter into partnerships with other print companies. That was something we wouldn’t have done in the past but we will be doing it next year. We have identified the company that we will be partnering with next year in tendering for some of the bigger contracts in both the public and private sector. That print partner has strengths that we don’t have and vice versa.’ The provision of online services and investment in wide format equipment are other

goals but aren’t priority projects for 2013. ‘We will be looking at providing online services but not until 2014,’ says Brendan. ‘We have our own internal manufacturing system so we have the ground work done on that but we need to link it to our customers’ sites. However, we see that as more of a luxury for us than a necessity at the moment so it would be 2014 before our customers can order and track their orders online.’ Similarly, they have no plans to invest in wide format equipment next year. ‘It is something we probably should have done although everyone seems to be investing in wide format now,’ he says. ‘We have investment in mind for other parts of our business next year so wide format isn’t a priority for us right now because we subcontract out wide format work locally if our customers require it but the in-house investment will happen

Irish Printer November/December 2012 further down the line.’ When it comes to the outlook for the industry next year, Brendan says it appears to be a mixed bag. ‘While margins are more competitive the industry seems to be more positive outside Dublin and trading conditions seem to be improving,’ he says. ‘That is the feedback I’m getting from people we deal with in the industry. On the other hand, I’m hearing that the industry is very different in the Dublin area where there appears to be a much less positive mood. Maybe there are too many printers in Dublin. A relatively recent development that is giving print companies a boost is the number of suppliers that are now offering competitive finance in their own organisations, and that is particularly true of the bigger suppliers to the industry. This is good news for printers because they can buy with little or no financial charge and it is getting things moving for the industry. I believe that, while the industry is more competitive and margins aren’t what they were, print companies that are well structured and are continuing to get support from existing clients will survive.’ Premier Paper’s Will Enright is also reporting an improved trading climate in 2012 compared to 2011. ‘We found trade steadier in 2012 compared to 2011 and we would be optimistic about next year as we have seen a slightly more stabilised market this year, particularly in the past couple of months,’ he says. Like Brendan, he is optimistic about the prospects for Premier Paper next year. ‘That is because of the hard work we have put into the business and the way we have adapted to the current situation,’ he says. ‘There is no doubt that there is still an over supply of paper in the market. The market has shrunk considerably in the last couple of years yet the number of merchants in the market has remained mostly the same, albeit with a few players merging together and some smaller ones closing. A lot of merchants are still out there looking for the same level of business, similar to what is happening with printers. In addition, a lot of our customers are telling us that the banks are tightening up on their facilities and that is

making operating difficult for them so until that issue is resolved print businesses won’t have the freedom to grow. On the plus side, there seems to be a growth in the number of businesses starting to advertise again which will help the printing industry. People are starting to believe that they can reach new markets with their own business so that is positive.’ Agfa Ireland’s Peter Doyle, president of the Irish Printing Federation, is cautiously optimistic about the industry’s prospects in 2013. ‘While things aren’t getting hugely better there appears to be some degree of stability happening in the industry at the moment,’ he says. ‘Of course the situation varies across different sectors of our industry – some sectors are doing better than others and some companies are doing better than others. However, we are seeing more marketing activity which is generating more work for printers. There has been a big increase in direct mail and point of sale marketing which is creating work for the packaging side of the business. Also, the agri and food sectors are growing and that is having a positive impact on the packaging side of the industry and we know that the pharmaceutical sector is continuing to flourish and that is impacting positively on some print businesses.’ While there are reasons to be positive about the outlook for next year, Peter points out that there are still a number of negatives in the market which are making and will continue to make it difficult for print companies to operate. ‘The situation still remains extremely competitive – although capacity has left the industry in the last couple of years companies are still competing very hard for business,’ he says. ‘Price pressure is quite severe and businesses are finding it hard to get paid still so that impacts on cashflow.’ When it comes to the Irish Printing Federation’s plans for 2013, Peter says they would like to increase the number of member firms. ‘Individual companies can contribute hugely in terms of the ideas they can bring to the federation,’ he says. ‘We did have a drive to increase member-

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ship in the last year and that was successful to a degree but many people are focused on managing their businesses and on survival so we didn’t have high expectations because of that. However, we did welcome some new members this year and we introduced a new membership category to reduce the cost of membership and that has helped and we believe it will help us to attract more members next year.’ Peter is conscious that the IPF is perceived by some as a Dublin organisation. ‘I’d like to stress that this is not the case – the IPF is the representative organisation for print businesses across the country,’ he says. ‘There is also a perception that it is for big companies and that isn’t true either – the aim is to improve the lot of our industry and that affects every company large and small, whether they are in Dublin or outside of Dublin. The federation has carried out some surveys of the industry and we will continue to do that to find out what people are feeling regarding a whole range of issues, including new revenue streams, employment, and the running of their businesses, and we will feed that back into the industry and make that research available to IPF members and to anyone who responds to the surveys. In addition, the IPF is a member of the Print and Packaging Forum so we will continue to play an active role in the Forum next year as well.’ The Print and Packaging Forum will be focusing on a number of key initiatives to support the industry in 2013. ‘The focus for January is to bring in new members to the “Print Irish” campaign,’ says Forum director Dr Kevin Byrne. ‘Five companies signed up to the campaign in November alone. In total we have about 39 members of the “Print Irish” campaign, which includes all 22 of the Snap franchises. The “Print Irish Print of the Year Award” is taking place on the 25 January in the National Print Museum. This event is for Print Irish members only and it will be the Forum’s inaugural event of 2013. The Forum will also be placing a strong emphasis on public procurement and on getting printers to tender for public

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projects in partnership with each other next year. One consortium has already been established to do this and the objective is not just to focus on Ireland but to look to other countries for public sector opportunities. We are also hoping to continue the Green Business initiative in 2013 and we are currently seeking funding for that. On the day of our Green Business workshop in November we succeeded in getting four companies to sign up to the Green Business programme.’ That is in addition to the seven companies that have already been audited by the Green Business programme (see pages 42 and 43). Resource Efficiency Audits of those four companies were in progress at the time of writing so Kevin says they hope to have had 11 participants on the Green Business initiative by year end. Kevin is optimistic about the prospects for DIT Bolton Street’s apprenticeship programme next year. ‘We have nine people signed up to the programme already and, as of the 10 December, we are hoping that we will have a minimum of 10 signed up by January so that is a 225% improvement on 2012,’ he says. ‘In addition, printing is one of the few craft areas in the country that has managed to achieve growth in apprenticeship numbers – every other trade is still diminishing whereas we have managed to turn around interest in printing so that is very encouraging for the future skill levels in the industry. The number of printers in training has always been a barometer for how the industry is doing so these numbers indicate that the industry believes there will be growth next year.’ Kevin is also optimistic about the prospects for the industry in 2013. ‘We have come through a very tough year and year-on-year there is always the hope that things will improve but we haven’t had a significant amount of company closures this year and there has been relative stability,’ he says. ‘Pricing is tight and margins are tight too but firms have managed to readjust their positions to the point where they are competitive at lower prices. Also, a number of firms are beginning to re-look at investment in terms of plant and equipment so that is encouraging’

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MEDIA focus

Irish Printer November/December 2012

New Look to Tackle Challenging Times There is now a multitude of digital mobile devices on which consumers can access and read newspapers and the challenges that these have and continue to pose for the newspaper industry are well documented. This month The Irish Times took the first in a series of steps towards refreshing its product offering. Improving the reader experience and increasing sales are the objective, the latter being the big challenge for all newspaper publishers in the digital age. The most noticeable aspect of the re-designed The Irish Times is the reduction in the size of the paper. It has gone from being a big broadsheet that was 400mm wide to a 368mm wide title. The reduction in width is eight per cent. For the company’s compact publications, such as Health + Family, the reduction is in the depth while the width remains the same. The same is true for the Magazine. In an article in The Irish Times on 6 November editor, Kevin O’Sullivan, and production and design editor, Liam Ryan, outlined the different aspects of the redesigned paper to readers. They pointed out that the smaller size required changes at the Citywest printing plant and that the transition has been taking place over the last few weeks. Speaking to Irish Printer on 7 November, Colm Fitzpatrick, general manager of the newspaper’s Citywest printing facility, said they had to modify their Geoman printing press from manroland and their Muller Martini newsliners and stacking lines. ‘The mailroom equipment modification has been completed and engineers from manroland, along with our own engineers, are modifying the press,’ he said. ‘Over half of the press has been converted and the remainder will be converted over the next two weeks. The smaller size means we had to dismantle the press and modify the ink rollers and cylinders.’ Martin Lockley, managing director of manroland Ireland, says the rollers on the Geoman press are too long in their current format so they had to be removed, brought to their premises in Santry and milled to the new size on a special CNC computerised grinding machine. ‘There were 560 rollers involved and that grinding process took six to seven

Irish Printer November/December 2012 weeks of solid work and about 350 man hours to grind them to the new size,’ he says. ‘We also had to extensively modify the three folders on the press, along with the formers. Anything that folds the paper has been offset to accommodate the new size. In addition, all the register pins in the plate cylinders had to be moved and repositioned. The reel stands also had to be modified. As the image doesn’t extend across the press in the same way, all of the imposition software on the Geoman that calculates how much ink and water is required had to be altered. We have a crew of six people from manroland working alongside people from The Irish Times. The manroland crew will have been there on site in total for seven weeks and the project will be completed before the end of November.’ The Irish Times has also installed a new CtP system. ‘We had three Agfa Polaris CtP

systems and we now have two Agfa Advantage systems – we have moved from a green to a violet plate which is a low chemical processing system,’ says Colm Fitzpatrick. ‘All

MEDIA focus

of our products have moved over to the new size and they are being printed on the new part of the press until the remainder of the press has been fully converted. We reduced the web width of the press to bring it into line with other newspapers in Ireland and the UK. Apart from The Irish Times, we also print Metro, The Irish Mail on Sunday,The Sunday World,The Farmers Journal,The Irish Catholic, Trinity News, and The Galway Advertiser. We are now the same size as the other papers being produced in Ireland and the UK. This web width reduction is a vital aspect of the re-designed paper, which is the first step in our rolling out the new website and new editorial production system, both of which will come into effect in the New Year.’ Production and design editor Liam Ryan says the re-design was a response to an editorial brief from editor Kevin O’Sullivan and deputy editor Denis Dundon. ‘I came up with a brief based on my conversation with them and with a wider editorial management group,’ he says. ‘Edinburgh-based newspaper design consultancy Palmer Watson responded to the brief and we agreed the outline design with them. From our first conversations with them to the achievement of the overall look and feel took about six weeks and then they handed it over to Brian Kilmartin, our chief sub editor, and I. We worked it through every section of the paper. As we worked on sections we sent them back for Palmer Watson to critique and that process went on for July, August and September. Also, as we worked the design into each section of the magazine, we discussed it with our commissioning editors and with our other staff because we had to flesh out what the new design meant for us editorially. Palmer Watson came over early October and at that stage we were building the design in Hermes, which is our newspaper publishing system. Palmer Watson completed the design in InDesign and we had to bring the design into our more basic Hermes publishing system. When it was mostly built, Palmer Watson came over and went through how we had built it. That was a pretty robust critique and we had to re-do some of it in the last couple of weeks. There was then a training programme with all of our layout editors and that took about 10 days to get everyone to know how to operate the system. In the meantime we were writing manuals and making templates and then the re-design went live.’ Liam says making the design work in The Irish Times’ internal systems and interpreting it throughout the publications was a big challenge. ‘We did a lot of print testing with Colm and because the press wasn’t yet modified that was quite challenging but it was also very enjoyable,’ he says. ‘Implementation in a newspaper publishing system and the roll out

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of the project in terms of bringing everyone at the paper with us has been an arduous but positive process. Working with Palmer Watson has been really good because they are specialist newspaper designers and they have won a couple of global best design newspaper awards, one of which was as recently as last year for a Danish paper that is quite similar to The Irish Times.’ Palmer Watson has a long record in papers in western and northern Europe. They previously worked with The Irish Times in the 2008 design refresh of the paper and were also involved in the design of The Ticket. The Irish Times typefaces are largely unchanged and they are continuing to use Expresso and Flama fonts. ‘The design had to take account of the size reduction so our headline sizes are smaller and we compensated for that by increasing impact with another weight of our existing typeface,’ says Liam. ‘We have introduced two weights of Expresso - the extra bold face for headlines in our news sections and the black with a tint applied, which is used in headlines in the Arts and Life pages. The body text is the same Expresso typeface as before but it has been increased slightly (from 8.5pt to 8.7pt). The other family of fonts is the Flama font and that was also an existing font but with the re-design we are using less Flama and more Expresso.’ Liam believes that the redesign makes the pages more approachable and less intimidating. ‘We have opened up the pages with different entry points and regard this as the biggest change and the one that should have the most impact with readers,’ he says. ‘The traditional cross heads that we have brought back into stories is another big change. We have quotations, numbers, a lot more panels, and our usage of captions all creates multiple locations for a reader to enter a story. If we have edited correctly and selected the right quotations or panels, the reader will get something from the experience even if they don’t read the entire article. Hopefully they will be engaged enough by the entry points to read the whole article but even if they don’t we feel we have given them enough to engage with the subject and understand it. We have double gutters between stories and extremities and there is a lot more white space. There is also more consistent spacing between words and that gives the paragraphs a more consistent feel. We are trying to give readers a better experience and to increase paper sales. It is about trying to present a newspaper that people want to read. We believe that the way we write and approach stories and present them will encourage people to opt for our paper. We are in the business of trying to keep readers and maybe get a few new ones.’

Congratulations to all at Print Media Services Winner of the Print of The Year Award And Winners of the “Annual Report� Category at the Irish Print Awards Congratulations Also to Print Run Hudson Killeen and KPS Colour Print also nominated in the category

Swan Paper 108 Baldoyle Industrial Estate, Dublin 13. Tel. 01 8393932, Fax 01 8391107, Email sales@swanpaper.com

Swan paper - Sponsors of the Annual Report Category

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Irish Print Awards, Print of the Year 2012

Standards Setting Small Printer Scoops Ultimate Accolade Print Media Services won the Irish Printer Print of the Year 2012 award at this year’s Irish Print Awards. The first-time overall award winners won the industry’s highest honour for their Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2011 entry, which was also shortlisted in the Annual Reports category. ‘Winning this award means everything to us and we will be ambassadors for the Irish Print Awards throughout the coming year,’ say directors Paddy Gallagher and Gerry Moore. ‘A number of our fellow professionals in the industry have congratulated us on this award and said they believed it was long overdue so that is very gratifying. We will be bringing it to suppliers and customers and telling them that this is what it is all about - the quality of the work that is produced by our industry. Printing is a service industry and, in times of difficulty, we can sometimes forget that. We will be trying to win the Print of the Year Award again next year – it has never been done before so to achieve something that has never been done would be great!’ Print Media Services are no strangers to winning awards more than once, having won the Small Printer of the Year in 2008, 2009 and 2010, which was presented to them by Portman Graphics and Komori UK. ‘I’d like to thank Ian Murphy and Jason O’Brien of Portman Graphics and Steve Turner of Komori UK who have been our hosts for five years,’ says Paddy Gallagher. ‘Not a week goes by that I don’t say to Gerry the best thing we ever did was buy our Komori LS529 five colour press, which we installed in 2008. It allows us to print very high quality work very efficiently because of its quick makeready and running speed. It has a maximum running sheet of 15,000 sheets per hour. This machine will make ready four times faster than our previous Komori model. The Concern Annual Report and Accounts 2011 was printed on this press, as is all of our work, and it is printed by our printer, Alan Keane. Gerry, Alan, John Farrell, who looks after repro and plate making, and I see every job that we print so there is a consistency of approach and a consistency of quality as a result. We all know the customer and their requirements.’ Print Media Services have been printing the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts for the past three years and won the Annual Reports category in the Irish Print Awards in 2011 for the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2010. The print run for the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2011 was 1,500 copies and the client was Red Dog Design, one of the top design companies in Ireland. ‘It was printed on UPM Fine uncoated paper from Swan Paper,’ says Paddy. ‘We also used special inks – Huber inks from Graphocolor – because we were printing on uncoated paper. 90% of the jobs that we print are printed on uncoated paper so we have a reputation in the printing industry for printing on uncoated paper. A lot of printers don’t like printing on uncoated paper because they have to change the way they make their plates and change their inks. What we feel we do differently to most printers is that we match the plate to the paper to the ink. We know that a lot of our competitors don’t do that – they use the same ink and plates for every job they print on their presses regardless of what stock it is on and they run into problems as a result whereas we match everything to the paper. Red Dog Design asked us to guarantee a match up of the image on the inside front cover

(l-r) Maev Martin, Editor, Irish Printer with Paddy Gallagher and Gerry Moore of Print Media Services

to the first page of text. We had to move the images to allow for the binding hinge on the spine and we did it perfectly. In addition, they asked us if the vibrant red on the front cover would be of sufficient quality in process or if we should print it as a spot colour. We printed it in process and it worked just as well and that was because of the special Huber inks that we used.’ Paddy Gallagher began his career in the Turner Print Group in Longford in the late 1980s before training in the College of Printing in DIT Bolton Street. From there he went to Future Print in Baldoyle and, following a return stint with the Turner Print Group, he moved to Microprint in Tallaght and on to Woodprintcraft before setting up Print Media Services with Gerry Moore in 2005. Gerry Moore began his career in Irish Silk Screen Services (now Colorman Ireland). He then worked for Scanlith Services and Colour Repro before setting up his own repro company M&T Graphics with his former partner Paddy Thewlis. ‘Most of our clients are designers and we also print for state and semi-state organisations a number of blue chip companies,’ says Paddy. ‘We have a good reputation for printing anything tricky that requires attention to detail. We inhabit the space between the very big printers and the high street printers, and we pride ourselves on providing a high quality bespoke product.’

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Hall of Fame Laureate 2012 Irish Printer magazine established the Hall of Fame award 18 years ago to recognise the contribution of someone who has made a significant contribution to creating and maintaining quality standards in the Irish printing industry. Previous winners are a who’s who of our trade - people who have made a lasting impression on their colleagues and competitors and earned the respect of their fellow professionals because of the quality standards they espouse and deliver. The high esteem in which our award winners are held could be for a number of reasons such as the consistent quality of their output, the way they manage their business, the innovative way in which they have pioneered new technologies, their impact on educational standards, or because they have worked hard to represent issues of concern to printers at government level. For most of its history, the Hall of Fame award has gone to an individual and has only been won by a duo twice - in 2003 when Jim Kirwan and Jack Davis took the top honours and in 2006 when Louis O’Neill and John Nicholson won the award. This year, for the third time in its history, the Hall of Fame award goes to another double act and one of the industry’s best known partnerships – Jim Hudson and Sean Killeen. Hudson Killeen is one of Ireland’s longest-standing and accomplished printing companies. The business employs 50 people and its principals, Sean Killeen and Jim Hudson, are among the best known and respected printers in the country. Promotional work constitutes about 90% of Hudson Killeen’s output while books and other high quality material accounts for the rest. Their major customers are a broad mix of corporate end users and third-party customers such as print management companies and design and advertising agencies. Hudson Killeen’s strategy has and continues to be one of playing to its strengths and avoiding diversification into too many new areas. Jim Hudson and Sean Killeen met when they both worked in Earlsfort Press, which was part of the Dakota Group, in the midto-late 1970s. Jim was working in sales and Sean was a print supervisor. They decided that joining forces to start their own printing business made sense. In 1980, in the teeth of the last big recession, many people probably thought they were foolish but they went ahead anyway and began trading in 1981. By the end of that year they had four employees and won their first Irish Print Award – the Small Printer of the Year award! They have won the Printer of the Year award three times and they have had numerous wins in the Annual Report and Sheet Fed Litho categories. In January 2008 Hudson Killeen made the big move from their offices on Slaney Road in Glasnevin to their current 30,000 square foot home in Ballycoolin Business Park in Blanchardstown. This could have been a disastrous move for the company as it happened just six months before the ESRI declared Ireland’s economy to be in recession. However, despite the unfortunate timing, the move and the €3m investment that accompanied it proved to be the right decisions for the future of the company. That investment has brought efficiencies to their business that has helped them to meet the escalation in service level expectations that they have been experiencing in the past few years. Their foresight in how they run and develop their business has given much encouragement to their staff and customers and is an inspiration to other Irish printers.

Jim Hudson (left) and Sean Killeen of Hudson Killeen, with their Hall of Fame Awards

Hall of Fame Previous Laureates 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Bill Britton Patrick McAlinden Ted Crosbie Joe Reddin Sean Galavan Roy Bailie OBE Paddy MacMonagle Jack Gilroy Chris Daly Jim Kirwan and Jack Davis Arthur Vincent Owen Curran Louis O’Neill and John Nicholson Frank Corr Claire Nixon Gerry Andrews Warren Turner Freddie Snowe

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Irish Printing Federation Print Media Apprentice of the Year 2012 The apprenticeship programme, which is run through the School of Print in DIT Bolton Street, Dublin, plays a major role in attracting young people to train and work in our sector. The programme ensures that all participants are well-educated, experienced and skilled in every facet of the printing industry and are well equipped to be an asset to any company’s operation. This year’s recipient of the Print Media Apprentice of the Year award is John Martin from the School of Print in DIT Bolton Street. John is employed by Playprint in Dublin.

Peter Doyle, president of the Irish Printing Federation, presents the Print Media Apprentice of the Year award to John Martin.

Alphagraphic Inks/ Böttcher Systems Print Graduate of the Year 2012 Education plays a fundamental part in developing both the craft and business skills of future print industry professionals and now more than ever is the foundation stone that will ensure a bright future for Ireland’s print and packaging industry. The Irish Print Awards recognise the importance of education within the industry and those who have excelled during their studies. The recipient of this year’s Print Graduate of the Year Award is Jason Ali from Belfast Metropolitan College. Jason is employed by Delta Print & Packaging in Belfast.

Wesley Moody of Alphagraphic Inks presents the Print Graduate of the Year award to Jason Ali.

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The Xerox Ireland Print Manager of the Year 2012

Conor Smith (left) receives his award from Xerox Ireland’s Norman McNellis.

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onor Smith, managing director of Snap’s Sandyford centre in Dublin, is this year’s Print Manager of

the Year. ‘Snap in Sandyford and the Snap Group are thrilled with the win,’ says Conor. ‘We have never been successful in the Irish Franchise Associations awards (the centre was awarded the Franchisee of the Year 2012 by the Irish Franchise Association) and the Irish Print Awards in one year so that is a first for us. The Snap Group rates the Irish Print Awards very highly and there are several categories that we are planning to enter next year.’ Conor describes himself as the ‘front man’ for the Snap operation in Sandyford. ‘None of our success would have been possible without a fantastic group of people in place,’ he says. ‘We have very talented and hardworking staff at our centre in Sandyford so it is very much a team effort. In addition, the Snap Group drives all of our marketing initiatives and is a great support to the centre operations.’ Why does he believe he was chosen for this award? ‘Times are very tough out there and we have fought the good battle but we have had a bit of good fortune,’ he says. ‘Dermot Bolger, a long-time Snap franchise owner, often says that good luck is when opportunity and preparation collide so I like to think we got a pinch of good luck. I also like to think

that we have a very good system in place at Snap which is matched with good people and that in turn is matched with good products, in terms of the quality and the portfolio that is available. We have changed our direction and diversified to become almost marketing consultants, with an emphasis on print. We recently launched a number of new technologybased projects and increased the scope of services that we offer customers so we are selling a more diverse product range to our existing client base. Some companies put the emphasis on getting new customers but we have worked very hard at trying to harvest the accounts that we have by selling them more. For example, with some customers we might be selling digital print, as well as promotional products, litho printing and some technologybased services.’ Following his education at St Michael’s College in Dublin, Conor studied marketing, receiving an Honours Degree (B. Sc. Mktg Mgt) from Trinity College Dublin in 1986. His managerial career began in 1988 when he worked in Taher Meats Roscrea (formerly Roscrea Meats) as assistant factory manager. His career in the printing industry started in 1990 when he joined Print & Display for an eight-year stint before setting up the Snap centre in Dun Laoghaire in 1998. He sold the centre in 2000 and, in the same

year, bought the Snap centre in Sandyford where he has worked ever since. Despite Conor’s modesty and emphasis on the excellent team effort that has contributed to Snap Sandyford’s success, his career achievements as a manager are impressive. At Print & Display he was handling one million pounds worth of screen printing every year while at Snap in Dun Laoghaire he played a crucial role in creating a record breaking launch, reaching sales of €250,000 in year one and €500,000 in year two. ‘At Snap Sandyford I helped to double the sales in the first 18 months and Snap Sandyford was the first Snap centre to embrace promotional products,’ he says. ‘The centre also helped source raw material for the group by creating supply lines from Asia and the Continent. Out of the 21 Snap centres in the Group in Ireland, Snap Sandyford is consistently in the top five.’ In 2004 Conor managed Snap Sandyford’s move from a 2,000 square foot building into a state-of-the-art 4000 square foot premises. ‘The move created a fully vertically integrated print centre for large and small format digital printing,’ says Conor. ‘We offer SRA3 on-site litho production with full in-house finishing (binding, folding, scoring, numbering & booklet making) and a full design service is available in a modern design studio.’ Snap Sandyford has a turnover of €1.2m.

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The Heidelberg Award for Sheetfed Colour Offset Printrun won the top prize in the Sheetfed Colour Offset category for their printing of the TV3 Autumn Schedule brochure. ‘We have been nominated in this category a number of times but this is our first win for Sheetfed Colour Offset Printing so we are absolutely delighted,’ says Printrun managing director Hugh Grennan. ‘We regard this category and the annual reports category as the most prestigious categories in the Irish Print Awards so they are the two that we tend to chase for a win. I’m also very pleased about Jim Hudson and Sean Killeen winning the Hall of Fame award because they have put a lot into the printing industry in Ireland over the years so the accolade is well deserved.’ Printrun first entered the Irish Print Awards in 2004 and they have secured a nomination every year since then. ‘We won the Small Printer award in 2005 and 2005 and the Annual Report category in 2008, 2009 and 2010,’ says Hugh. The 136-page TV3 Autumn Schedule brochure was printed on 130gsm Condat supplied by Swan Paper, with matt lamination and spot UV on the cover while the inside was coated with a water-based silk varnish. The brochure was printed on a Heidelberg Speedmaster 102.

Declan Martin (left), of Heidelberg Graphic Equipment, presents the Sheetfed Colour Offset Printing award to Hugh Grennan, managing director, Printrun.

Finalists: • Printrun Ltd – ‘Bloom Inspiring Gardens’ • Hudson Killeen – ‘IADT Report 2012’ • Nicholson & Bass – ‘Wayne Pollock Exclusive Luxury’ • Hudson Killeen – ‘RIAI Architecture’ • Printrun Ltd – ‘TV3’

manroland Ireland Award for National Newspapers Cork-based Webprint Concepts won the top award in this category for their printing of The Irish Examiner for the second year in a row. ‘We are delighted and surprised that we should win the award two years in a row,’ says Michael O’Brien, head of operations at Webprint Concepts. ‘This award is the culmination of excellent co-operation between our partners at The Irish Examiner and our own staff. It shows that we have maintained the required standard right through our production system that earned us the award last year.’ The company is also a two-time winner in the Regional Newspaper category having been nominated three times and has secured four nominations in the National Newspaper category in previous Irish Print Awards. The Irish Examiner is produced on Webprint Concept’s KBA Colora press and is printed on either UPM 42.5gsm recycled newsprint from Shotton or Resolute’s 42.4gsm virgin newsprint from Canada.

Martin Lockley (left), managing director, manroland Ireland, presents the National Newspapers award to Donagh O’Doherty, managing director, Webprint Concepts.

Finalists: • Smurfit Kappa News Press – The Times • Webprint Concepts – The Irish Examiner • Interpress NI – The Irish News • Smurfit Kappa News Press – The Daily Mail • Interpress NI – The I

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Irish Printer November/December 2012

The Agfa Ireland Award for Regional Newspapers Celtic Media Print scooped the top award in this category for their printing of The Connaught Telegraph. The company was also nominated in this category for its printing of Mayo News. Celtic Media Print is a regular entrant in and occasional winner of the regional newspapers category in the Irish Print Awards, most recently in 2009. The company also won the category in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. ‘The award underpins our commitment to quality and it is nice for that commitment to be recognised in such a public forum,’ says Celtic Media Print’s print director Bill Paterson. ‘It was particularly pleasing to win with this title as it is the oldest regional newspaper in Ireland. In addition, The Connaught Telegraph is a dual customer of

Celtic Media Group as we not only print the paper but we pre-press it as well. The Connaught Telegraph is printed on a double width KBA Colora press at our plant in Navan, Co Meath and pre-pressed at our Mullingar prepress centre. The paper is printed on 45gsm standard newsprint from Norske Skog.’ Celtic Media Group’s publications’ portfolio includes five weekly regional newspapers - The Meath Chronicle,The Anglo-Celt,Westmeath Examiner,The Westmeath Independent and Offaly Independent. The Mullaghboy plant prints all the group’s titles, in addition to non-group titles which include The Irish Daily Mirror, The Irish Sunday Mirror and The Sunday People for the Trinity Mirror Group.

Peter Doyle (left), sales director, Agfa Ireland, presents the Regional Newspapers award to Bill Paterson, print director, Celtic Media Print.

Finalists:

• Interpress NI – ‘The Impartial Reporter’ • Celtic Media Print – ‘The Mayo News’ • Smurfit Kappa News Press – ‘The Galway Independent’ • Celtic Media Print – ‘The Connaught Telegraph’ • Smurfit Kappa News Press – ‘The Cork Independent’

The KBA Award for Magazines Hudson Killeen made it two in a row in this category, having won it for the first time in 2011. This year they won the award for their printing of Ella Fashion magazine. ‘We were surprised to win the award again this year but very pleased as it further extends our range of activity and areas of expertise within the printing industry,’ says director Jim Hudson. ‘This print job came to us through an Irish publisher living in Nigeria who sent us a sample of what had been produced in Nigeria, which was pretty poor. He wanted to see if we could do a better job. The origination on the job was pretty good so we were able to turn it into a proper job.’ The 52-page magazine was printed on 170gsm Art paper. The print run was 2,500 and it was printed on our Heidelberg 10-colour perfector.’

Finalists: • Fine Print – ‘UCD Today’ • Hudson Killeen – ‘Ella Fashion’ • Boylan Print Group – ‘Social & Personal’ • Nicholson & Bass – ‘Irish Arts Review’ • Printrun Ltd – ‘Brown Thomas Living’ • Nicholson & Bass – ‘Irish Arts Review’

Alan O’Brien (left) of KBA presents the Magazines award to Brian Fenelon, production manager, Hudson Killeen

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The Xerox Ireland Award for Books Hudson Killeen was victorious in the Books category for the printing of Shaped By History, a book that was self-published by well known printer and former Print and Packaging Forum director Gerry Andrews. ‘We have entered this category a number of times and won the books award in 2009,’ says Hudson Killeen director Jim Hudson. ‘That is the only time we have won the category. We are very pleased to win it again because, following the demise of Colour Books, we are finding that book printing is an area of the market that we are achieving a bit more penetration in.’ Shaped by History was printed on Hudson Killeen’s Heidelberg 10colour perfector. The print run was 1,500 copies and it was printed on

150gsm Silk supplied by Swan Paper. The 192-page hardback book was a thread sewn book. Hudson Killeen printed and laminated a dust jacket on 170gsm Silk and it was case bound by Harlequin Crafts. The book was based on Gerry Andrews’ Shaped by History exhibition in the Hunt Museum in Limerick earlier this year, which featured a range of images of the Milk Market in Limerick during the 1970s. ‘Demand from Limerick and Limerick region bookshops was extremely high and also in selected Dublin bookshops and the libraries are looking for the book as well so it is disappearing rapidly off the shelves,’ says Gerry. ‘I was awarded a Fellowship from the International Photographic Federation for the work I did on

Norman McNellis of Xerox Ireland (right) presents the Books award to Jim Hudson of Hudson Killeen.

the photos included in the book.’ Gerry and his son Paul did all of the design and layout work on the book and supplied the artwork to Hudson Killeen.

‘The design, printing, thread sewing and case binding was done in a four-week period,’ says Gerry. ‘It was a tall order and a challenging project but very rewarding.’

Finalists: • Hudson Killeen – ‘Shaped by History’ • Nicholson & Bass – ‘Saba The Cook Book’ • Anglo Printers – ‘Father Browne’s Kerry’ • Donore Speciality Print – ‘By Royal Appointment’ • Hudson Killeen – ‘ICAD’ • Impress Printers – ‘A Celebration of Ireland’s Nobel Literary Heritage’ • Standard Printers – ‘Memorable Moments (Football Edition)’

The Swan Paper Award for Annual Reports Print Media Services claimed the top award in this category for their printing of the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2011. Print Media Services have been printing the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts for the past three years and won the Annual Reports category in the Irish Print Awards in 2011 for the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2010. The print run for the Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2011 was 1,500 copies and the client was Red Dog Design, one of the top design companies in Ireland. It was printed on UPM Fine uncoated paper from Swan Paper. Brian McArdle (centre), chief operations director with Swan Paper, presents the Annual Reports award to Paddy Gallagher (left) and Gerry Moore of Print Media Services.

Finalists: • Print Media Services – ‘Concern Worldwide Annual Report and Accounts 2011’ • Printrun – ‘DCC Annual Report’ • Hudson Killeen – ‘Paddy Power’ • KPS Colour Print – ‘ESB’ • Hudson Killeen – ‘Cork Simon Community’

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Irish Printer November/December 2012

The Uniboard Carton Packaging Award The Printed Image took the top honours this year in the Carton Packaging category. ‘For the company and staff alike the win for our carton packaging printing is recognition of the effort they put in day in day out and it is a great calling card for our sales staff,’ says production director Brian Fay. ‘We had five nominations last year and five this year across the Sheetfed Colour Offset, Digital Print, Screen Printing and Carton Packaging categories so winning the carton packaging award was terrific, particularly as it is the first time that we have won this category since we began entering the awards.’

Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse was printed on a Frobi board. The print was a metallic colour and was finished with a spot UV varnish and gold foil. The print run was 10,000 cartons and it was printed on a Heidelberg CD102 carton press. The Printed Image has a long history of success at the awards. The company won its first award in 1993 for the Small Printer category and also won the overall Print of the Year award. ‘We are coming back next year on the 20th anniversary to win the overall award again!,’ says Brian. ‘The Printed Image has been nominated in the Sheetfed Colour Offset,

Brian Fay (right), production director with The Printed Image is presented with the award for Carton Packaging by Myles Fitzpatrick, managing director, Uniboard.

Screen Printing and Digital Print categories and we have had category wins in the Sheetfed Colour Offset,

Screen Printing and Digital Print categories over the years.’

Finalists: • The Printed Image – Bushmills Carton • Anglo Printers – Handmade Soap Company (hand wash) • The Printed Image – Smirnoff Carton • Anglo Printers – Handmade Soap Company (hand cream) • Dakota Packaging – Adobe Premier Elements 11.0

The Fujifilm Screen Printing Award Print & Display won this year’s Screen Printing category for their printing of a free standing unit for the display of Benylin products in pharmacies and multiples. The free standing display unit was printed on EE flute corrugated board, display board, and PVC clear gloss on Print & Display’s Thieme four-colour machine. The print run was 235. ‘We are delighted with the win,’ says Ronan Conway, managing director of Print & Display. ‘We thought the Benylin unit was well printed so we are very happy that its quality was recognised. Definition Print Management was the client and the design was carried out by Bonfire. We haven’t entered the Screen Printing category in recent years and it is a number of years since we have won the category. We have also entered the large format digital category in the past and we entered the vehicle wrap category this year as well. We plan to enter a number of categories in the Irish Print Awards next year.’

Greg O’Brien, area sales manager, Sericol Products, FujiFilm Ireland, presents the Screen Printing award to Ronan Conway, managing director, Print & Display.

Finalists: • Print & Display – Benylin Unit • Smurfit Kappa Display – Pepsico Ireland, 8 Case Doritos Unit • The Printed Image – Mars Unit • Smurfit Kappa Display – Kraft Foods, Joyville Chocolate Machine

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The Avery Dennison Award for Self-Adhesive Roll Labels New Era Packaging in Co Louth won the top award in the Self Adhesive Roll Labels category for their printing of Carson’s Crisp Armagh Cider label. ‘This award means a great deal to us because it allows us to stand out among our peers,’ says David Nevin, sales director, Ireland, with New Era Packaging. ‘To be recognised by the printing industry is an accolade in itself. I’d like to thank everyone that was involved with the job here at New Era Packaging, from our sales personnel through to quality control and our production staff - it is a team effort. I’d like to especially thank our flexo print foreman, Andrew O’Neill, and his team.’ New Era Packaging won this category in 2008 for the quality of their work in printing another beverage label, Sainsbury’s Rum. Carson’s Crisp Armagh Cider label was printed on a Nilpeter F250 UV flexo machine. The 90mm x 224mm label was printed five colours plus varnish on a polyethylene sheet - PE 85 Top White S692N - with a permanent adhesive. The print run was 50,000 labels.

Sandra Tarr, country manager – Ireland, Avery Dennison, presents the Self Adhesive Roll Labels award to David Nevin, sales director, New Era Packaging

Finalists: • Multiprint Labels – Brakspear Triple • The Label Factory – Hybrid Malt Whiskey • JH Label Solutions – Feckin Irish Whiskey • Watershed Labels – Café D’Or • New Era Packaging – Carson’s Crisp Armagh Cider

The Antalis McNaughton Award for Digital Printing Plus Print won the Digital Print category this year for their entry ‘Masters of Style’. This was the Dublin-based printers first year to enter the category. ‘We were delighted and surprised to win this category the first year we entered it,’ says Ciaran Smith of Plus Print. ‘When you think of the amount of jobs that are produced by the average digital printer it makes the win really special for us. In fact, the job itself was a special job for the company. We do a lot of high end book work and normally it would be litho printed but due to the small run for the ‘Masters of Style’ catalogue we printed it digitally and it is certainly a great advertisement for what digital print can achieve in terms of quality. A lot of work went into it. I’d like to thank Pascal Flynn of PCF Print Finishers and John Kavanagh in Kavanagh Bookbinding.’ The company first entered the Irish Print Awards last year and were victorious in the Small Printer category, which they won again this year. ‘Masters of Style’ is a 108-page catalogue printed by Plus Print for Irish design house, Indigo and Cloth. The catalogue was printed on Munken Lynx and the print run was 50 copies. The catalogue was thread-sewn with an exposed spine and mounted onto two millimetre greyboard front and back, and foil blocked.

Mark Horgan (centre), sales director, Antalis McNaughton, presents the Digital Print award to John Kenny (left) and Ciaran Smith of Plus Print

Finalists: • Plus Print – Masters of Style • Horizon Innovative Digital & Print Solutions – Vit Hit Box • Select Digital Print – Rua Red Plastic Art • The Printed Image – Halo Distribution Box • Select Digital Print – Half Door Greeting Cards

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The Reprocentre Group Award for Large Format Digital Printing Select Digital Print was victorious in the Large Format Digital Print category for their entry, Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse. This is the third successive year that the company has walked away with the top prize in this category. They also took the top award in the large format digital print category in 2006 and in the digital print category in 2004, while director Tara Wilson-Black won the Young Print Manager of the Year award in 2005. ‘We are honored to have won our sixth Irish Print Award as each year the entries for digital print are increasing,’ says Tara Wilson-Black of Select Digital Print. ‘The fact that we continue to bring home an award in this sector reinforces the continuity of the quality of digital print we produce year after year.

Select Digital has become the one to beat in the large format digital print category. When I set up the company almost 10 years ago my goal was not to run the biggest digital print house in Ireland, it was simply to run the best. It’s safe to say that Select Digital is now one of the leading digital print houses in Ireland producing quality digital print year after year after year. We would like to thank our customers and suppliers for their continued support over the last 10 years, without this we would not be able to produce the high quality of digital print that we output daily.’ Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse is a light box graphic. Select Digital Print produced different shapes and sizes of the graphic for pharmacies and department stores around

Philip A. Black (left) and Tara Wilson Black of Select Digital Print receive their award for Large Format Digital Print from Eoin Honan of Reprocentre Group.

the country. It is used in conjunction with other pieces of promotional material such as pull-ups, banner stands, showcards and flyers. Nuxe

Huile Prodigieuse was printed on a Mimaki JV33 printer and printed on Metamark Duratran film. The print run was approximately 40 units.

Finalists: • Horizon Innovative Digital & Print Solutions – Tesco Produce Hanging Board • Select Digital Print – Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse • The Printed Image – Halo Standee • Select Digital Print – Aura by Swarovski • Smurfit Kappa Display – Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard Powers Whiskey Free Glass FSDU

The Ferag Systems Award for Print Finishing Hudson Killeen made it three in a row by winning the Print Finishing category for the publication, ‘The Dynamic Curriculum: Shared Experiences of Ongoing Curricular Change in Higher Education’. This project was produced for a design house. ‘Like any award it helps to showcase the wide range of products that we can offer so it is always valuable and helpful,’ says director Jim Hudson. ‘I think we will have to build a new wall here at our premises for our certificates because we have won so many awards in the Irish Print Awards down through the years! Our awards tally would be in excess of 20 at this stage and, including nominations, we are in excess of 50 accolades in total. We have won awards in all of the categories that we are qualified to enter and we will continue to enter those categories in the coming years.’ ‘The Dynamic Curriculum: Shared Experiences of Ongoing Curricular Change in Higher Education’ was printed on Cyclus offset paper, a recycled paper from Antalis McNaughton. The cover was printed on 350gsm Colorplan Smoke supplied by Paper Assist. ‘The print run was only 200,’ says Jim. ‘It was Pur bound and there were special leaves tipped-in at various intervals in the book which made finishing quite tricky.’

Brian Fenelon (right), production manager, Hudson Killeen, accepts the award for Print Finishing from Lee Whatmough of Ferag Systems.

Finalists: • Hudson Killeen – The Dynamic Curriculum • Standard Printers – Newell • Hudson Killeen – UCD Architecture • Webprint Concepts – NI 4 Kids • Printglaze – Lets Talk Solar

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The Irish Printer Award for Graphic Design of Printed Material Award Fresh Design won this category for the quality of their graphic design work on Saba Cook Book, which they designed for Saba restaurant in Dublin. ‘For their first cook book, as well as sharing recipes and their passion for Thai and Vietnamese food with friends and customers, proprietor Paul Cadden and executive chef Taweesak Trakoolwattana wanted to show the public the reason why Saba is such a success – its staff,’ says Fresh Design’s creative director, Alvin Perry. ‘The 296 page book also served as an opportunity to raise awareness for two great causes; Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin and The Thai Red Cross Society, with all profits from book sales going to these two charities. We produced the entire project from scratch, including commis-

sioning the photographer Matthew Thompson to take all of the pictures. We wanted to document a typical day behind the scenes at Saba, to capture the staff at work as they begin their day - preparing the restaurant for opening, sourcing local ingredients, setting the tables, prepping the food, serving the public, mixing the cocktails right the way through to close, when its time to clean up and lock the doors after another busy day. To achieve this, we used unstaged, natural, documentary photography. Utilising different paper stocks, we divided the sections within the book and used ribbons to ensure it functioned practically as a cook book.’ The cover was printed on 170gsm Popset Hot Brown paper and the end papers were printed on 170gsm Popset Cosmo Pink. The interior

Fiona Larmon, commercial manager, Irish Printer, presents the Graphic Design of Printed Material award to John Nicholson of Nicholson Bass, who accepted the award on behalf of Fresh Design

was a mix of 120gsm Olin Smooth Absolute White paper and 150gsm Hello Gloss and Hello Silk. The print run was 5,000 copies and the book was

printed by Nicholson Bass on their Heidelberg Speedmaster four-colour 102 machine. The book was case bound in Belfast by Robinson and Mornin.

Finalists: • In the Company of Books – Montenotte • Fuse Graphic Design – Classics at Trinity • Fresh Design – Saba Cook Book • Fuse Graphic Design – Musgrave Food Service

The Reprographic Systems Award for Flexographic Printing JH Label Solutions claimed the Flexographic Print award for their printing of the London Dry Gin label. The print run on the Marks and Spencer’s label was approximately 250,000. ‘The client is a company called Haymans Distillers in London and we print a number of labels for them for their gin and vodka ranges,’ says JH Label Solutions general manager Greg Prescott. ‘Winning this category in the first year we entered it was great. We were up against Smurfit Kappa Dublin and their customer Jameson Whiskey so that is pretty stiff competition. Our label is nice looking but when I saw the big companies we were up against I didn’t think we would make it so we were pleasantly surprised. We entered the Self Adhesive Roll Labels category last year and this year and we will definitely enter both categories next year.’ The label was printed on Fleur de Cotton, a matt wine label material, supplied by UPM Raflatac. It was produced on an eight-colour Nilpeter FB3300 UV flexographic printer.

Vincent Keating (left), managing director of Reprographic Systems, presents the Flexographic Print Award to Greg Prescott, general manager, and Keith Hamilton, managing director, of JH Label Solutions

Finalists: • JH Label Solutions – London Dry Gin • Smurfit Kappa Dublin – Jameson Select Reserve • JH Label Solutions – Bottle Green Organic Red Grape

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The Robert Horne Sign & Display Award for Commercial Vehicle Wraps Dublin-based DP Imaging won the Commercial Vehicle Wraps category this year for their printing of a fleet branding campaign for Pigsback.com ‘This is the first year that we have entered the Irish Print Awards so we are over the moon about the win,’ says DP Imaging sales director Suzanne Nugent. ‘I used to work at Print & Display, who won the Screen Category this year, and Ronan Conway, who was accepting their award on the night, was one of the first people to congratulate me. Pigsback wanted corporate branding on their 13-strong fleet of cars. The job that we produced for them was printed on Orajet cast vinyl, supplied by Print Solutions, and it was printed on a HP Scitex LX600 printer. The Pigsback.com job is one of a number of fleet branding jobs that we have completed recently. The design was supplied by Pigsback. com and I’d like to thank Nicky Keogh, marketing manager of Pigsback.com, for allowing us to submit the job as an entry in the Irish Print Awards. Now that we’ve had a taste of success we will definitely enter the awards next year!’

Suneel Seetal, regional sales manager, Robert Horne Sign & Display, presents the Commercial Vehicle Wraps award to Suzanne Nugent of DP Imaging.

Finalists: • Print & Display – The WLR Beetle Wrap • DP Imaging – Pigsback.com • Indigo Signs – Clean Ireland Recycling

The Komori/ Portman Graphic Award for Small Printers Plus Print won the Small Printer of the Year category for their work on the book Creative Island which they printed for The Crafts Council of Ireland. It is the company’s second year in a row to win the Small Printer of the Year award. Plus Print printed 3,000 copies of Creative Island on their fivecolour Komori press. The book was printed on UPM Fine and Claro Gloss paper supplied by Antalis McNaughton. ‘The book was mounted on 2mm greycard and it was debossed and foil blocked and we colour matched the ink with the foil,’ says Ciaran Smith. ‘It was Pur bound and each copy was hand mounted.

Kavanagh Bookbinding did the Pur binding and Kevin Kelly Print Finishers did the foiling and debossing. The book was designed by Cody Delahunty. We were shortlisted twice in the Small Printer category – the NCAD Ceramics, Glass and Metals book was also a finalist - so we were delighted with the win but not overly surprised because a lot of work went into both projects. There was a lot of collaboration and meetings with the designers for three or four months before the books were printed. Ceramics, Glass and Metals was designed by NCAD student Mary Leonard. The print run was 750 copies and it was also printed on UPM Fine and

John Kenny (left) and Ciaran Smith (right) of Plus Print are presented with the Small Printers award by Steve Turner, general sales manager, Komori UK.

Claro Gloss. We work with some really high end clients – mainly graphic design houses but also some corporate clients - so our

quality level has to be very high. We believe our eye for detail is what has made Plus Print so successful.’

Finalists: • The Label Factory – Hybrid Malt Whiskey • Plus Print – Creative Island • Print Media Services – Warren Private Brochure • Plus Print – NCAD Ceramics, Glass & Metals

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7 6 1. (l-r): Lisa O’Reilly, Uniboard, Orla Lynch, The Printed Image and Sharon Fitzpatrick, Uniboard 2. John Tomlynson (left), WRH Marketing and Ian Russell, Smurfit Kappa 3. Roy Cowley (left), Agfa Graphics and Eric Bergin, Webprint Concepts 4. (l-r): Andrew Attey, Smurfit Kappa News Press, David O’Keeffe, Agfa Graphics and Peter Doyle, Agfa Graphics 5. (l-r): Andy McGill, Smurfit Kappa News Press, Kells, Jarlath Feeney, Cork Independent newspaper, and Stephen Farrell, Smurfit Kappa News Press 6. (l-r): Declan Dooley, managing director, Galway Independent Newspaper, Philip Clarke, Smurfit Kappa News Press, and Paul McIlveen, Smurfit Kappa 7. Desmond Farrelly (left) and Michael Curran, Irish Daily Mail

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1. (l-r): John Martin, Playprint, Ann Martin, John Martin Jnr, Print Media Apprentice of the Year, and Amanda Gallagher 2. Terry Cummins (left), chief executive and Peter Doyle, president, Irish Printing Federation 3. (l-r): Brian Rickard, Clondalkin Pharma & Healthcare, Brendan Mowles, Dakota Packaging and Robert Murphy, The Printed Image 4. Robert South (left), Nicholson & Bass and John Cunningham, Belfast Metropolitan College 5. Gabriel Iannizzotto, Zannini Ireland and Niamh Doyle 6. (l-r): Maurice McElroy, Meath Chronicle Print, Tom Kelly, Connaught Telegraph, Frank Mulrennan, Celtic Media Group and Tom Gillespie, editor, Connaught Telegraph 7. (l-r): Ian Murphy, Portman Graphic, Carol Ann De Monge, Printglaze and David O’Donovan, Printglaze

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1. (l-r): Sandra Tarr, Kathryn Kehoe and Sue Warren, Avery Dennison 2. (l-r): Declan Martin, Heidelberg, Andy Jack, Heidelberg and Paul Cunningham, Standard Printers 3. (l-r): Eunan McEntee, Bernardo Pamfil and Tim Chen, Smurfit Kappa Display 4. Rafal Wasyl and Sue Nugent, DP Imaging 5. Dominic Gaffney (left), Smurfit Kappa and Vincent Keating, Reprographic Systems 6. John Eager (left), chief executive officer, Snap and Dermot Bolger, Snap Blanchardstown 7. Claire and Conor Smith, Snap Sandyford 8.(l-r): Michael Butler, Flint Group, David Wilson, Interpress and Thomas Carey, Interpress 9.(l-r): Ciara McCann, Irish Distillers, Ron Noble, Reprographic Systems and Paul Whelan, Irish Distillers 10. (l-r): Jason Cassidy, Patrick Brierton and Paul Brierton, DP Imaging

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wide f o r mat

Producing Banners Isn’t Just About Printing

CoverUp’s Anthony Byrne talks about their eye catching banner advertising The Gathering at Dublin Airport

The Job

Dublin-based large format printers CoverUp specialise in the supply of printed banners, from small bunting to large format mesh banners. One of their recent jobs was the creation of a massive banner to advertise one of the most high profile ventures in Ireland – The Gathering – which is a series of events and festivals to celebrate Irish culture, history and genealogy. The banner was produced for Aer Lingus and is affixed to the old Aer Lingus HQ building near Terminal 2 at Dublin Airport. ‘The building was built in the 1960s so our banner has improved the look of the building and is a striking advertisement for this major cultural event,’ says CoverUp’s Anthony Byrne. ‘The material for the banner was supplied by Soyang Europe Ltd. It is a Soyang Mesh-9 banner. The banner is approximately 18 metres high by 76 metres long and we printed it on our 3.2 metre HP Scitex 1500 solvent press. The contract to produce the banner was put out to tender by Aer Lingus and we were successful. We visited the airport and surveyed the job and then came up with the best way of doing it. It is the third banner that we have produced for Aer Lingus.’

The Challenge

Anthony says producing The Gathering banner was complicated. ‘We had to be particularly careful in printing and fitting the artwork for the banner,’ he says. ‘If it was too small, stretched or

shrunk the text would be off so it was a slow process. There is only a 50mm overlap tolerance so if you go wrong you won’t get a fitting. The banner is made in 12 sections and we came up with a system whereby, once the 12 sections were installed, it would look like one seamless banner. The old Aer Lingus HQ building is a glass building so we had to be careful where we put the fittings. We could only affix the fittings at 6.3 metre intervals. The erection of the 12 sections was completed over a weekend. The banner was erected in March and it will be in situ until the end of next year. We are one of the main printers and providers of building banners in the country. Producing banners isn’t just about printing - the production and erection of the banners requires a lot of additional expertise, including significant reinforcement and strength, depending on the nature and size of the banner. CoverUp began trading originally as print finishers 35 years ago but gradually moved into digital printing. We now provide a wide range of products, including signs and lightboxes, bunting, banners, flags and flagpoles, windbreakers/awnings, vehicle and boat covers, canvas backdrops and artist stretchers.’

The Technology

Apart from the HP Scitex 1500, CoverUp operates a HP FP700 flatbed press, a Dgen die sublimation printer and a 60-inch Mimaki printer and plotter, which they installed four months ago. ‘You can’t digitally print onto an acrylic canvas so the Mimaki device works

Irish Printer November/December 2012

with the heat press for heat transfers onto canvas, wind breakers and awnings,’ says Anthony. ‘All of our HP devices were purchased from The Reprocentre. The Dgen printer is six years old so we are hoping to upgrade to a 3.2 metre machine in the New Year. We are also looking at buying a five-metre HP XL5100 UV printer.’

The Material

‘CoverUp use Mesh-9 because of the wind loading/air flow, especially as the large Mesh wrap at the airport is very exposed and will have high wind resistance,’ says Mark Mashiter, managing director, Soyang Europe Ltd. ‘Mesh-9 features 50% air flow through. The base fabric is polyester. It has a total weight of 80z/270gsm and a maximum width of 500cm or 197 inches. Mesh-9 is printable on two sides with UV ink, and is widely used for scaffolding, theatrical, TV backdrops, hanging display and large format advertisement. A PVC backing is also available which prevents ink spray through when printing and makes the feeding easier.’ Soyang Europe offers materials for all types of digital printing

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(solvent, eco solvent, UV, latex and dye sublimation) in sizes up to five metres wide. The Soyang range includes SoFlex banner/backlit/ blockout, mesh, SoMagic wall covering, SoStick SAV and Licensed One Way Vision, the Endutex range of banner and canvas, and the Aurich range of polyester sublimation textiles - all available from their stockholding in the UK and Ireland.

Trends

‘UV inks and the latex inks are the way the industry is moving,’ says Anthony. ‘In a couple of years there will be no solvent inks for large format. The quality of banners is improving as the quality of the large format technology develops. The dpi has gone from 360 to 720 on a lot of large format devices and that has been happening over the last four years. The new technology is improving the overall quality of the print and that is allowing us to print a wider range of applications.’

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Printers Bring Lamination In-House Portman Graphic is the sole distributor for D&K laminators in Ireland and recently concluded the installation of their fourth D&K thermal laminator in the country. ‘Doing their own laminating gives the printer total control on timings and cost,’ says Portman Graphic managing director Ian Murphy. ‘For a modest investment printing companies can now carry out their own lamination which negates the need for couriers and outsourcing and brings a margin back in-house’. All four machines supplied by Portman Graphic are B2 size – Anglo Printers in Drogheda purchased a 35m/min Jupiter high speed laminator while Printrun Ltd, Impress Printing Works and Colorman Ireland opted for the B2 Europa model. The machines are equipped with fully automatic pile feeders, automatic sheet separation and jogging tables. ‘We haven’t sold a B1 press from the D&K range in Ireland yet but the range does include a variety of B2 presses, including the Europa, and these presses are proving very popular on the Irish market since we began selling the range two years ago,’ says Ian. ‘Of the six D&K laminators that we have installed in Ireland over the past two years, four of them have been the Europa model, which is an entry level machine. These laminators generate huge savings for print companies, particularly when it comes to courier costs. Water-based laminators are high volume but they take up a lot of space so printers generally don’t buy wet laminators because they are expensive and messy. However, printers are now finding investing in the D&K range of laminators, which are geared towards shortto-medium runs, is making it economic for them to bring laminating in-house.’ Anglo Printers installed the Jupiter laminator from the D&K range in January 2011. ‘We used to outsource all of our lamination,’ says managing director Padraic Kierans. ‘But run lengths are decreasing constantly and we were moving goods to and from a laminating house on a daily basis so that was very expensive and time consuming. We were spending €50,000 to €60,000 a year outsourcing laminating so it made sense to bring it

Digital Print Finish’s Billhofer B1 Laminator

in-house. The Jupiter laminator cost us about £36,000 sterling so we are finding that the investment has paid for itself in a relatively short period of time. We have taken out courier costs, outsourcing costs, and turnaround times have been reduced. So, as well as cutting our costs, our customer service has improved. The Jupiter has been a revelation to us – it has a reasonably small footprint, is simple to operate, and is environmentally efficient. It is a good machine at its price point, providing B2 lamination single sided and it runs at 25 metres per minute. It is quick to set up for short run digital work and for longer run litho work it is a well built machine.’ Printrun installed a B2 Europa laminator in September. Like Anglo Printers, they decided that keeping as much of their finishing work in-house made economic sense. ‘It is the first laminator we have installed and it is an exceptionally good piece of equipment,’ says managing director Hugh Grennan. ‘It allows us to keep 90% of our laminating in-house and gives us more control as well because can laminate at any time over a 24-hour period. It is very suitable for short-run laminating work, which is what we wanted it for and you can change sizes very easily. The quick set up is

ideal for our needs. Portman Graphic were very good with the installation and delivery. Apart from the laminator, we have three folders, a stitching line, two cylinders for diecutting, and a B1 and B2 guillotine.’ Impress Printing Works installed their Europa laminator earlier this year. ‘We have a B2 press, B3 press and a digital press and we were sending a lot of work out for laminating and some of it was only 20 or 30 sheets so it made sense to bring it in-house,’ says director Jack Lunney. Like Printrun, the Europa is their first laminator. ‘Prior to that all of our laminating was outsourced,’ he says. ‘It hasn’t just saved on the cost of outsourcing to a finishing house, but also on our throughput time, and our courier costs have been eliminated. It has allowed us to provide a speedier service to our customers because we can print jobs, laminate them and send them out immediately. Most digital jobs are small, so they can now be completed from start to finish – printed, laminated, scored and stitched – in an hour or an hour and a half, depending on the size of the job.’ Colorman Ireland’s B2 Europa laminator is the most recent of the Portman Graphic laminator installations. Colin Reid says that saving

Irish Printer November/December 2012 on transport costs was a big factor in their investment. ‘We still outsource large volume laminating but this has allowed us to handle short-to-medium runs in-house and have more control over our jobs in-house,’ says Colin. ‘We have a small A3 size digital laminator but the Europa is the first B2 laminator we have bought. The biggest cost in laminating is the film, not the laminator itself. We did an analysis on the volume of lamination we were doing and included our transport costs and looked at lead times and we decided it was best to have the facility in-house. The B2 Europa laminator is working well for us and is in full production.’ PMG Laminating provides lamination and spot UV varnishing services, along with some gold foiling. The company, which has been trading since 2006, rents their office and production space in Kylemore Park South, Ballyfermot, from another finishing company, P2 Finishing. ‘We give them die-cutting and gluing work if required and they would give us lamination and spot UV

work,’ says PJ McGann. ‘We have a number of customers in common so a job could come into me for lamination and be sent onto P2 for die cutting.’ Apart from die cutting and gluing, P2

c o mme r c ia l r ep o r t

also provides a foiling, box patching and make-up service. While a lot of printers with in-house laminators use thermal laminators that already have the adhesive on the film, PMG Lami-

A bookletmaker at Digital Print FInish

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nating does water-based lamination – they coat the film on the machine with adhesive. PMG Laminating operates two B1 Billhofer laminators, one Sakurai spot UV machine, and a Heidelberg Platen for gold foiling. ‘The Billhofer 102 can do a sheet size of 1400mm by 1020mm and our Billhofer 76 machine can do B1 portrait,’ says PJ. ‘The 102 came to us from Germany in the second week in October and is a more automated system than the previous 102 device. The water-based laminators are more versatile in terms of the type of stock that can be used and the type of work you can do. That is because there isn’t as much heat coming from them as the thermal laminators so there isn’t as much curl. September to Christmas is usually the busiest time. This year work is a bit down on previous years but we are kept going. We get a steady flow of work with spot UV – we have been doing it for the past four years so we have built up a reputation for quality work in this area within the trade. However, in terms of volume,

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lamination is our core business.’

The Digital Finishing Specialist

Digital Print Finish began trading in January 2012, providing a finishing service for digital printers. The company employs three people and recently installed a new Duplo booklet maker and tower collator, along with Duplo scoring equipment. ‘There are hundreds of digital printers in the country but not many of them have the equipment they need to finish jobs and that is where we come in,’ says managing director Conor Clarkin. ‘I think we are the only company in Ireland specialising in digital finishing for the trade. Most finishing companies are geared up for litho finishing and don’t want to know about digital because the runs are so small and it can be problematic. That is why we have entered the market to cater specifically for digital because we found that printers’ requirements were not being met in this growing area.’ Digital Print Finish provide a wide range of finishing services, from laminating, perfect binding and wire-o-binding

to booklet making, scoring, round cornering, drilling and flow wrapping. ‘Our Billhofer B1 size laminator is our flagship piece of equipment,’ says Conor. ‘It is a high end production machine that offers gloss and matt lamination services to digital and litho printers. It runs up to 5,000 B2 sheets every hour. It is a very rare machine - there are only a few Billhofers in Ireland - and when it first came on the market it cost over £100,000 to buy new. Our model is 15 years old so I bought it for a lot less than that but it is the Rolls Royce of laminating. We also have a small laminator – a GBC device - for business cards and smaller jobs. We find that we have to educate digital printers about the way to present a job for digital finishing. For example, there are specific requirements for perfect binding digital print so we tell our clients to call us before they print the job so we can talk them through it. Digital has its own problems that are very different to the requirements for finishing litho print. That is mainly because it is toner-based so the sheets are sometimes slipping, cracking or curling and static can be a problem. These are all issues that you don’t really get with litho printing so our finishing equipment is geared to handle those problems. We also offer tradeonly digital printing. We use the Develop

7000 presses from Konica Minolta, which are really good. Some printers find it easier to let us take the job from scratch and supply the job back packed and ready to go. This can save a lot of time and hassle especially for our customers outside Dublin. Our customers are either printers or print management companies who expect the best possible print and the best finish possible. We have no sales reps out there selling direct to commercial clients. All trade work carried out is confidential and we would never approach anybody’s customer direct.’

The Biggest and Fastest Laminator in Ireland

Printglaze completed a €700,000 capital investment programme last year which included a new Muller Martini Prima stitching line, H&H Flexomailer and an Acoro Perfect Pur Binder from Muller Martini. This year the company has invested a further €1m in its plant in Cherry Orchard Industrial Estate in Dublin and is currently rolling out a raft of new equipment. ‘We are installing a new 18-station gatherer, a new thread sewer, an additional book block feeder to our Muller Acoro binder to allow the fast Printglaze’s book block feeder

Irish Printer November/December 2012

New Lamination Technology Available in 2013 New types of films and finishing processes are coming on stream for use with the HP Indigo range of printers in 2013. According to Colm Paul, managing director of DBC Group, a new sleeking process has been developed by HP and GMP for Indigo users and GMP are hoping to roll out this new technology for other digital press manufacturers in the future. ‘This new technology is a process of film overlay called sleeking whereby the sleeking film activates the toner to produce the finish required, whether it be a holographic effect, a matt overlay or a gloss spot, so you can print over the laminate to get your spot lamination,’ says Colm Paul. ‘Printers in Ireland aren’t using this technology yet because it was only launched in November but DBC Group has samples of the finished process for printers that are Indigo users and other printers who are curious to see how the new technology works. The film will be ready to be shipped in March 2013 and we will make it available to the Irish market then so I’d advise printers to watch this space because it is coming their way. The problem with spot lamination is that it is difficult to do it for short run work. This new process means that printers can do spot lamination very quickly and easily on short runs and it brings the spot laminating process in-house for the printer.’ Like other lamination systems suppliers, GBC Group has experienced a steady increase in demand for its systems. ‘More and more printers are bringing their finishing, including laminating, in-house because it allows them to control the speed at which a job is finished and it is more cost effective because they don’t have courier and carriage charges,’ says Colm Paul. ‘Sales of

our print on demand laminators such as the GMP Protopic and Eurolam brands have increased 8.5% this year on 2011 and we have had year-on-year growth, even in the recession, which is indicative of how people are prepared to spend money if they know it will yield savings further down the line. We have also enjoyed steady growth with our wide format laminators and laminating films.’ The DBC Group’s new Eurolam 540 model is a fully automatic OPP laminator for large volume litho production which is generally used for print runs in excess of 10,000. Their new GMP Protopic 540 laminator is a single-sided machine for digital and litho print which tends to be used for shorter volume runs, anything up to 10,000 copies. Their most recent installation of the GMP Protopic 540 model was in Clondalkin Pharma and Healthcare in September and they are also using our GMP Ultrabond laminating film because it is the only film that works for them on their digital prints. Co Down-based Peninsula Print and Design installed a GMP Protopic 540 duplex laminator in August and that is the first installation of GMP’s duplex model in Ireland. ‘While we have been enjoying a lot of success with the GMP Protopic and Eurolam laminator ranges, our new GMP Ultrabond laminating film for digital printing has also been proving popular with printers,’ says Colm Paul. ‘That is because of the quality of adhesion to digital prints where there is an oily or wax residue left over by the print. It will adhere to most digital printers, whether produced on a Xerox, Konica Minolta or Ricoh device.’ All of the GMP Protopic laminators can use standard OPP film or digital film on digital prints.

running of thread sewn books, and a Stahl pharmaceutical folder, which will allow us to go down to sizes below 20mm,’ says managing director Fernon de Monge. ‘In January we will take delivery of a 102E Bobst die cutter and we are currently adding a 15,000 square foot extension to our plant, which will be completed by Christmas, to accommodate these new additions. The new equipment is all supplied by Portman Graphic and we have always sourced our equipment from them because Ian Murphy gives us the back up service we require.’ A Steinemann laminator, which the company has been operating for

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about eight years, covers virtually all of their laminating requirements. ‘It is the biggest and fastest laminator in Ireland and the UK,’ says Fernon. ‘The Steinemann laminator is the most up to date laminator you can get and it allows us to do very large volume work in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and even some high volume work in the UK market. We can put 10,000 sheets an hour on the floor. With the Steinemann we are offering a lamination service that is about 25% below our competitors’ prices. A lot of our customers have their own laminating systems but we do large run work for them – they send us jobs with a run of in excess of 10,000 sheets because it is more cost effective for them to outsource those jobs. We can laminate for them cheaper than their material costs. No laminator has come on the market in the last eight years that matches the Steinemann for quality, speed, turnaround, and cost effectiveness. For example, we finished 1.9

million brochures to promote The Gathering, the series of events and festivals taking place next year to celebrate Irish culture, history and genealogy. We gloss laminated, die cut, folded and latex glued them closed. The brochures went into every household around the country and we finished them in 10 days. The Steinemann allowed us to run 8,500 SRA1s per hour. That job could not have been done in 10 days if we hadn’t been able to laminate the brochures at that rate.’ Fernon says that the scale of the capital investments that they have made over the past couple of years has allowed them to offer a more competitive service to their customers. ‘We have been able to lower our prices consistently,’ he says. ‘We have doubled our running speeds and halved our makeready times on binding so that has allowed us to reduce prices by 20%. And our further investment in more modern and faster equipment allows us to reduce prices to customers this year by at least

Irish Printer November/December 2012 another 15%. This is not a race to the bottom – it is about making it easier for customers to utilise our services. The modern equipment allows us to run faster and therefore pass on savings to customers, which in turn attracts more work. We are now so cheap that it isn’t cost effective for printers to try and provide the finishing service that we offer in-house.’ Printglaze finishes digital, litho and carton work. ‘Our equipment can handle both digital and litho jobs and we can laminate digital work here,’ says Fernon. ‘Digital can be more problematic from a finishing point of view but our equipment can handle both digital and litho printed jobs and we are equally experienced in handling both so it isn’t a problem for us.’ The Printglaze bindery is open from 7am until 12.30pm at night and the company is currently recruiting staff to enable them to run 24 hours a day in the New Year. Presentation Binding in Cork supplies binding, laminating and print finishing machines, including guillotines, as well as shredding machines, shrink wrappers, and creasing and perforating machines. About 15% to 20% of Presentation Binding’s customer base is printers, mainly copy shops and small printers and the remainder are general businesses. ‘We are at the smaller end of the laminating market – we supply hand-fed roll machines and automatic double-sided machines,’ says managing director Paddy O’Leary. ‘Our main brand is the Al-Meister ALM 3220 laminator from Fujipla. Al-Meister has functions such as automatic feeding, laminating, and automatic framing capabilities. Every operation is automatically done, including setting the film and the inserting operation. The automatic paper feeder loads up to 200 sheets. The machine takes only three minutes

to finish laminating 10 sheets of A4 sized paper. For A3 sized paper it takes five minutes. Al-Meister automatically senses the size of the paper (A4 or A3) and selects the proper size. There are two modes – one is laminate with a waterproof effect and the other is laminate without margin, which is convenient for documents only requiring surface treatment.’ Presentation Binding has supplied laminators and binders to individual franchises in the Snap Group, as well as to Carrig Print in Carrigtohill and Collins Print and Packaging in Cork. ‘We also supply binding and laminating systems to some of the Prontaprint franchises,’ says Paddy. ‘We installed an Al-Meister ALM 3220 auto laminator in Snap in Cork and in Cork Institute of Technology and we have another one in TM Printing in Clare. A lot of the smaller printers are trying to be more self-sufficient and do as much as they can in-house. If a small printer gets a job and he has to send it out to a finishing house it will take longer and involve an investment of a couple of thousand euro in equipment. By doing the job in-house he is saving the cost of transport to the finishing house and the cost of what that finishing house will charge him for a job.’ Presentation Binding also supply calendar binding systems. The company recently secured an agency from a UK company which supplies these wire-obinding calendar punch and inserter machines as well as heavy duty punch binding systems for books. They are supplying a James Byrne WOB3500 wire-o-binding calendar punch and inserter machine to KC Print in Killarney and the company is hoping there will be a market among printers for the punching machines they supply for wire bound books in the New Year.

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Promoting the Small Printer’s Passion for Print Co Kildare-based Donovan Printing Ltd is typical of the many family-run small to medium-sized print companies that have successfully battled the recession. This month Irish Printer talks to their print and design manager Eugene Donovan about the company’s diversification strategy, online investment plans for 2013, and why he believes SMEs outside Dublin are not getting the support they need from the industry’s representative bodies. Donovan Printing Ltd, which began trading in 1983, was established by Eugene’s father and mother, Seamus & Jean Donovan. ‘My father was printing and he outsourced the layout work to a local designer,’ says Eugene. ‘It was simple, single colour work – we were primarily a pantone printing company which was set up in a shed at the back of the house. However, we always wanted to develop our design side rather than just producing standard layout work and that is where I came in. I trained in DIT Bolton Street. My year was the first year of originators in Bolton Street. Before that it was typesetters and compositors whereas the term originators covered everything from layout and design to film and platemaking.’ Eugene’s older brother, Cohlin, is a litho printer, his younger brother, Shane, is a graphic designer and originator and all three brothers trained at DIT Bolton Street. ‘My cousin works with us in the business and he is a litho printer and my uncle used to work with us as a finisher,’ says Eugene. ‘Our craft is design and print and we take pride in it. I believe that people tend to work harder and longer hours in a family business because that is the culture of the business. I also believe that there is a return to traditional business values now during this recession and that is where family businesses are coming into their own in the current climate.’ Donovan Printing produces a wide range of materials, including brochures, folders, inserts, NCR docket books, business cards, forms, leaflets, flyers, newsletters, reports, manuals and books. Their design team is also experienced in creating artwork for advertising and display on both a local and national level and can supply anything from pull-up banners, tent cards and canvas printing to various mounted panels. Apart from Eugene, Donovan Printing employs 10 people – Eugene’s father and managing director Seamus Donovan,

an office manager, four graphic designers, three litho printers and one dedicated finisher. ‘Teamwork is at the core of our success – everyone pitches in and stays late if a job needs to be done,’ says Eugene. ‘We had 11 staff at the start of the recession and we still have the same 11 staff.’

A Strategy for Survival

So what has been their strategy for coping with the recession? ‘We diversified into wide format and pushed our design capability to get whatever work is out there,’ he says. ‘We have fought hard to maintain our client base and that has been successful for us and we have secured new clients based on word of mouth and referrals. In the good times our prices were always fair. We never put 25% to 40% margins on our printing so we didn’t need to make dramatic price revisions and that has stood to us.’ In an effort to expand their facility, Donovan Printing looked at moving to an industrial unit off the main street in Newbridge in 2007. ‘However, the prices were still too high. At that point our managing director prudently said no and we stayed where we are. We were lucky we didn’t saddle ourselves with a colossal amount of debt. But we do need more space and we will expand upstairs in our existing premises – not next year but further down the line.’ Eugene says that when the recession started to bite they noticed competition from the big print companies that wasn’t there pre-recession. ‘However our prices were competitive and stood up to the test so we maintained our customer base while at the same time winning new clients,’ he says. 2011 was the toughest trading year for Donovan Printing. ‘I thought the ridiculous pricing in the market would go after last year but there is still unsustainable pricing out there,’ he says. ‘A lot of companies are offering trade prices to the consumer out of desperation. Trade printers offer good prices to us and to graphic designers but you have printers offering trade prices to the consumer. I’ve seen it over the last couple of years and it is killing our business. It’s a shame that some renegade companies are driving prices down because prices are really good for the end user and are at a viable level for print companies to build a business plan around.’ Although Donovan Printing experienced a slump in the trade in October, which Eugene blames on government and media kite flying in advance of the Budget, he says the first nine months of 2012 have been good for the company. ‘During the boom I did no foiling or embossing work but we have outsourced about seven or eight of those types of jobs and some of it is repeat work,’ he says. ‘That seems strange when companies are supposed to be paring back on expenditure. I don’t know why they didn’t come to us with these types of jobs during the good times nor do I know why they are coming to us now! Maybe it is because companies are trying to sell themselves harder and better than others – they are trying to sell their way out of the recession.’

Diversification Saves Jobs

Eugene says that diversifying into wide format has saved jobs at Donovan Printing. ‘Prior to 2004/2005 we were just litho printers and we never touched signage and POS work,’ he says. ‘Today signage and display work is a huge part of what we do but we outsource all of that work.’ The company has been outsourcing wide format printing work on behalf of its clients since 2008.

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‘In outsourcing it we try to keep the business local and the quality that we get is superb,’ he says. ‘We looked at investing in wide format in 2007 but we didn’t see the point in buying the equipment then and I still don’t think it would make sense for us now. It is too big an investment because, in addition to the capital required to purchase a wide format device, we would require additional space for that equipment, for mounting and laminating, and for stocking panels, and we would be entering a market that is saturated. In addition, there are killer prices out there so we prefer to work with our really high quality suppliers and we are consequently super competitive on price because of them. As a print company you have to diversify – you must be in a position to provide any type of print service that a customer or potential customer is looking for. If you can’t do it yourself you need to be able to outsource it to someone else and project manage the job for the client. We are offering the complete design and print service. For example, if someone needs something simple like a canvas made or a mug printed we will get it done for them. Also, if they need 100,000 catalogues done we will project manage it from start to finish and that, along with our ability to source competitive quotes, is a big part of our project management service. Donovan Printing project manages a range of work

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on a regular basis for well known national and international household names.’ Until recent years 70% of Donovan Printing’s clients were small businesses and about 30% were bigger companies and organisations. Now big businesses and organisations account for about 50% to 60% of their output. Trade printing for stationers and graphic designers has been a core part of their business from the beginning and they continue to supply a number of stationery companies and graphic designers throughout Leinster.

is competitively priced. We find that a lot of smaller printers like ourselves tend to have highly skilled designers. It goes back to the artisan approach that is inherent in most small, familyrun businesses where there is a passion for design and print.You don’t have to gravitate towards the cities for high end design – small rural businesses have the skillset and design expertise and you might be surprised at the cost.’

High End Design Capability

While Eugene is ‘vaguely aware’ of the Print and Packaging Forum’s Print Irish campaign, Donovan Printing hasn’t been approached by anyone urging them to sign up to the initiative. In October the Forum issued a direct mailer to 350 print companies and to government and media contacts in an effort to encourage participation in the campaign. Donovan Printing wasn’t one of the companies included in that mailer. Eugene feels that industry bodies haven’t been pro-active enough in representing the concerns of SMEs in the industry, particularly those outside Dublin. ‘For example, we have no involvement with the Irish Printing Federation,’ he says. ‘We perceive it as being a Dublin-centred federation and we would regard the federation as not being interested in SMEs. I have never been con-

One service that Donovan Printing doesn’t outsource is design. The company employs four graphic designers and Eugene carries out design work as needed. ‘We try to show customers the difference between a leaflet designed badly and one designed well and how that reflects on their business and what they are trying to promote about their company, products and services,’ he says. We like to handle a client’s job from start to finish and it can start with logo design right through to production of stationery, brochures, leaflets, point of sale, advertising and signage. It is a service that works excellently for us and it ensures we fill the capacity on our machinery. We are a printing company with a high end design capability that

A Support Service for Printers

tacted by the IPF or received any literature from them. My perception of the federation is that it is only interested in the big printers. Where does Donovan Printing, and other similar sized print companies based outside Dublin, fit into that?’ However, Donovan Printing is a member of the Irish Printers Association. ‘A lot of printers have contributed to that association and shared their experiences,’ he says. ‘It is a good support group for print companies. It acts as a watchdog in our industry and a forum for printers to share their experiences of the market. The association sends us regular emails and updates about what is happening in the industry. There are a lot of printing companies with good staff and excellent skill levels who don’t have a voice and aren’t represented by any association. They don’t have the support structure of a national organisation. The IPA has filled that gap to a certain extent by acting as a support group for some print companies in our industry. If the IPF had contacted us in 2008 about setting up an advice forum for printers in these tough times, where they could talk about rogue traders and other issues facing our industry, we would have signed up to it. We are only 35 minutes from Dublin but if you are a small company you might as well be in Australia because the big associations in our industry aren’t reaching out to us.’

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Online Upgrade for 2013

For Donovan Printing, the further development of their online presence will be a major project in 2013. ‘Our website is just information pages – it is quite basic and doesn’t include samples of our work,’ he says. ‘We will invest in the software and upgrade our website ourselves because we have already trained our staff. We should have had a stronger web presence three years ago as it could have been the difference between a tough year and a good year but getting in work and paying the wages has been all consuming. Print orders come to us over the phone or via a call in or emails. We haven’t got any orders from our website yet but hopefully that will change next year when we upgrade it and increase its functionality. We have a Facebook page which we don’t use so we will develop that and Twitter is something we will start as well. We are helping clients promote their businesses and we have the skillset to help them do it online yet we are not doing it for ourselves so that is what 2013 will be about for Donovan Printing. We already design artwork for corporate Facebook pages, particularly for businesses in the drinks industry that are rolling out online advertising campaigns, and we will increase that next year. In 2011 we installed

software that would allow us to offer a web design service but we found that the web design market was so competitive cost wise that we were better outsourcing it to a specialist. Again, like wide format, there is saturation in the market so the potential is not as great as we thought it would be.’ Donovan Printing has looked at getting into the photobooks market and product personalisation market but, again, Eugene says it is an expensive market to enter. ‘I would offer photobooks to my clients but only through a third party supplier,’ he says. ‘You really need the volume to do it in-house. However, one client of ours was looking at setting up an online automated ordering system for photo personalisation of gift boxes. We have been in discussion with them on this for 12 months. It may not happen for cost reasons but it is a great idea.’

Capital Investment

Last year Donovan Printing bought a new digital press – a Xerox XC700 – and Eugene says the output that they are getting from the press is one of the reasons 2012 has been such a strong year for the company. ‘What we get off that press is phenomenal,’ says ‘Small run digital printing is the way the industry is going – we needed a lower click rate and a good machine to handle small jobs better. The older machine had a higher click charge and we got that down by replacing it with this new Xerox printer so we are more competitive. We have kept the small back up digital press – an old Xerox DC12. We spent circa €40,000 on the new press. That isn’t a massive investment for a big print company but for us it is the equivalent of a big company spending €400,000 or €500,000.’ Apart from their digital presses, Donovan Printing also has two two-colour litho presses - a Heidelberg Printmaster and a Ryobi 522 – and a single colour Heidelberg GTO 45 which they installed two

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months ago. Donovan Printing also bought a Morgana folder recently. ‘The folder has been a great addition and has cut time dramatically,’ says Eugene. ‘We bought the folder and GTO at the same time. Our finishing department offers saddlestitching, wire-obinding, comb-binding, shrink wrapping, guillotining, scoring and perforating, celloglazing, padding and gluing, and hand finishing. We also operate a Duplo System 4000 booklet maker. We have a really good network of trade suppliers and finishers so we don’t need to invest in wide format or perfect binding or in a B1 or B2 press. We have been very conscious of not over stretching ourselves with large capital purchases and falling into the trap of having massive repayments for machinery that we have no work for. We prefer to rely on our strong supplier network for certain work and to project manage a job well. It is nice to be able to handle the bulk of the work internally but the trade suppliers are a crucial part of the industry now and going forward long term. It is not feasible to have every piece of equipment in-house and why would you when the skills are readily available in the industry? Printing has become a logistics business now. Print companies have had to refine their businesses and we have certainly increased our outsourcing as a means of diversifying our service offering. We design for the trade, we print for the trade and we also utilise the skills of others in the trade. This is the strength of our industry.’

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G r een P r in t ing

Going Green Won’t Cost the Earth Enterprise Ireland, in conjunction with the Print and Packaging Forum, ran an Efficiency Resource Workshop on 23 November as part of the Green Business resource efficiency programme, which is funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The workshop showcased resource efficiency measures that have been implemented by the print and packaging sector in Ireland (Chesapeake in Westport, Co Mayo and Webprint Concepts in Cork) as a result of their work with the Green Business programme, and provided practical, cost-saving advice. Speakers included resource efficiency experts Kara Flannery and Elisabeth Nagel, directors of Flannery Nagel Environmental, and Mark Hilton, technical director, SKM Enviros, and Michael O’Brien of Webprint Concepts.

What is Green Business?

The Green Business Initiative is a free resource efficiency advisory service for all SMEs which encourages them to change their behaviours in the area of environmental practice. www.greenbusiness.ie features online waste assessment tools, information on free green business workshops, sectoral case studies, and information on site assessments and detailed reports. Interested print and packaging companies can ap-

ply for site assessment online or via email at contactus@greenbusiness. ie. For the site assessment, a Green Business advisor visits your premises and identifies actual ‘no’ and low cost measures that will save your business money. The service is entirely free, confidential, and operated by the Clean Technology Centre, on behalf of the EPA. To date, Green Business has achieved an estimated €10m of identified savings for participant enterprises.

Green Print & Pack Programme

The Green Print and Pack Programme was set up in 2011. ‘The two key tasks of the programme are business recruitment and site visits (ie, Resource Efficiency Assessments) and we have completed seven of these REAs at print and pack companies around the country,’ says Kara Flannery, of Flannery Nagel Environmental. ‘The programme is funded for a year but we hope it continues to run next year. The main potential savings identified at the seven companies related to raw materials use, waste management and energy use and at least half of the cost saving opportunities that we identified are low cost. The other aspect of the programme is the production of a best practice guidance document, which will be published by the end of this year or early next year.’

Case Studies Chesapeake in Westport

Five print and pack companies were visited between 2009 and 2011. Seven were visited in 2012 under the Green Print & Pack Programme. The seven plants covered litho, web and sheet print, envelope overprinting, screen print, carbon converters and digital print and the companies were located in Dublin, Cork, Westport and Roscommon. The employees in the companies visited ranged from 10 to 180. More than €60,000 total potential savings were identified across the 12 companies visited so far and three plants had over €100,000 potential savings identified (one of these three was Chesapeake in Westport). Chesapeake moved to digital CtP in 2007 and that has reduced water and chemical use significantly. They use low VOC inks in small 2.5kg tins and the ink unused on presses is scraped back into the tins. They also use low IPA dampening solutions. Jobs are scheduled so they use similar colours on the presses for as long as possible, minimising the requirement to clean down presses between jobs. Chesapeake use bespoke sheet sizes where possible to minimise paper waste from sheet cut offs. They invested in a new camera to read the bar codes between each print job. The barcode on

the binder was moved to the edge trim and that trimmed the waste between jobs from 21mm to 12mm. An interlock between the binder and dust extractor saved a lot of energy. The aforementioned energy saving measures are examples of current good environmental practices at Chesapeake in Westport but the Green Business Print and Pack programme identified €140,000 of potential further savings. These included the use of historic job set up data to reduce set up waste and time, the introduction of a sheet-use KPI (key performance indicator) to add to make ready time, the re-use of slightly marked sheets in make ready runs, and the introduction of a dual system that allows the gumming and re-use of frequently used aluminium plates. Other potential further savings identified by the programme included the replacement of primary colour cartridges with ink in tins, the use of a re-usable plastic guide foil for the ink feeds, investment in a 30kW USD compressor using an existing compressor as back up, and the ducting of compressor heat into the production hall in winter to provide space heating rather than losing excess heat. Further measures that could yield cost savings included replacing warm air cabinets with radiant heaters, the installation of VSD motors

on pneumatic extraction fans, the running down of the adhesive on the binder to a low level before the 12-hourly refill (1,250 litres per year saving), printing directly onto cardboard boxes to replace labels, and reusing supplier pallets.

Webprint Concepts

Webprint Concepts converts 15,000 to 18,000 tonnes of newsprint annually for Thomas Crosbie Holdings (60% - Irish Examiner, Evening Echo, Sunday Business Post, 11 weekly regional papers), other weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines (25%), and semicommercial products (15%). Operations director Michael O’Brien said that in 2007 11% to 12% of their newsprint was used for makeready and by 2010 that percentage was down to 6.9% which meant the company was saving €400,000 a year on newsprint. Their annual newsprint spend was somewhere in the region of €7.5m to €9m. In 2007 €967,000 of that was waste and by 2010 newsprint waste was costing €570,000 so they managed to save €397,000 when compared to 2007. When it came to reel management, they reduced the amount of waste from newspaper reels by reducing the number of outer layers of paper that are scrapped, by running the reel down to a few millimetres on

the circumference from 120mm to 114mm, and by repairing and re-using very small and damaged ‘butt’ reels. These measures resulted in a saving of €11,000 per annum. Part of the company’s waste management drive was the introduction of a staff bonus programme of up to seven per cent of basic pay for achieving waste targets and they also appointed a training and development manager.

Electricity

In 2006 they replaced their standard T8 slimline tubes with T5 fluorescent tubes. Also since 2006 a variable speed drive compressor has acted as the main compressor at the facility. Press nip gauges, introduced in 2009, minimise excessive roller-to-roller pressure. They also replaced 20 high bay 400w lamps with 200w induction lamps. Photocell ambient light controls, introduced in 2010, save up to 12 hours of high bay lighting use on a summer’s day and last year they reduced the main compressor pressure from 10 bar to 8.5 bar. One of the recommendations made by the Green Business site visitors in November was that Webprint Concepts optimise AHU supply and extraction fan speeds from 15Hz to 35Hz based on press power demand and press hall temperature and humidity. This recommendation has been

Irish Printer November/December 2012 taken on board and implemented in the company. Michael told the workshop that Webprint Concepts variable speed compressor failed in December 2011. They could repair the compressor at a cost of €20,000 or replace it with a 75kW fixed speed compressor. This was the compressor’s third major failure in three years so Webprint Concepts opted to replace the existing compressor with a 75kw variable speed compressor which they installed at the end of June 2012 and this installation has yielded them a saving in their electricity bill of €6,000 in quarter 3 versus quarter 2 of 2012. Looking at Webprint Concept’s electricity usage per 1,000 copies in the first six months of 2012, Michael said that consumption went up because there was no variable speed compressor but that significantly improved in the last six months with the variable speed compressor installation. He said that 55% of Webprint Concept’s electricity usage is fixed. There has been a 14% reduction in usage per copy between 2009 and 2012 and a 10% reduction between 2010 and 2011. He said that Webprint Concept’s electricity usage in 2012 is likely to be the same as 2011 in spite of the compressor issue, lower production volumes and an increase in the use of finishing equipment. Measures that they have either completed or are in progress as a result of the Green Business visits include occupancy sensors to reduce lighting load in low occupancy areas (in progress), an annual compressed air leak survey using ultrasonic detectors (complete) and an increase in the regularity of meter reading and in the tracking of energy use (in progress). Regarding press hall temperature, Webprint Concepts’ Building Management System operates timed shutdowns and their cooling system is evaporative cooling, not chilling.

Gas

To improve the efficiency of their gas consumption

Webprint Concepts replaced their three 524kw heaters with 22 58kw condensing heaters. In 2010 they fine tuned their Building Management System to provide better boiler control and last year they installed an air/oil heat exchanger on their compactors’ hydraulics. As a result in 2011 their kWhr usage was reduced by 40% compared to 2009/2010 and in 2012 he said that kWhr usage should be a 30% to 40% reduction compared to 2011. Further measures that they have implemented in this area, as recommended by the Green Business programme, include the fitting of de-stratifying fans to circulate warm air to make space heating more cost effective and the fitting of a manually-operated damper to the compressor exhaust to divert warm air to the inside of the building during winter months.

Water

Following the Green Business site visits, Webprint Concepts replaced the open roller solvent (kerosene) wash baths, switching to an organic press room cleaner and this measure has saved them €6,500 a year. They also disconnected their rinse water supply and added a valved drain which has yielded an additional saving of €3,000 per annum for the company.

Bundle Wrapping

Webprint Concepts reduced the gauge of the packaging film from 35 to 25 micron and reduced the width by 20mm, saving €18,000 per annum. As a result of the Green Business programme they invested in a reprogramme wrap machine to further reduce film use by up to 20%. Michael estimates that this investment will yield savings of 16% in this area. Webprint Concepts also uses cover paper from newsprint reels as packaging material on the top and bottom of their pallets of newspapers and they have reduced their stitcher wire from 0.6mm to 0.46mm diameter which has yielded a 40% saving.

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Top Tips Mark Hilton, technical director, SKM Enviros, gave printers at the workshop some interesting energy saving tips.

Plate Costs

In one printing company the practice of using printing plates only once instead of gumming them for re-use resulted in a net loss per plate of €9 (€10 v €1) and a total loss per year of €270,000. The plates used to be gummed for re-use but the company stopped this practice due to concerns over faults occurring. He advised printers to identify why problems are occurring and to reuse at least some plates as re-use can be more effective than recycling.

Paper and Substrate Use

•Do not automatically discard the top and bottom layers – at one printing company this cost them €4,000 per year. •Review storage, packaging and handling •Undertake forklift driver training to prevent damage •Minimise paper thickness without affecting quality – this would need to be discussed with the client but it is worth addressing •On the web, optimise use as close to the end of the roll as possible – where does creasing risk really start?

Set-Up/Make Ready Losses

•Don’t just rely on the press manufacturer’s settings •Don’t just rely on the last equivalent job •On repeat/equivalent jobs use historic data from the machine to get better averages •Store and reuse the best of the setup paper •Use leftover/damaged stock for set-up

Production Planning

•Print estimate tools are widely

available to optimise how the operations work •Can you gang print? (ie, put more than one job onto a run) •Software (Metrics imposition software) optimises the layout of a single job on the plate

Inks & Solutions

•Use Low VOC inks – most printers have switched to water-based/UB cured inks •Do you use low IPA dampening or waterless printing? •Are inks quantities carefully forecast? •Are process inks recovered back into the tins for re-use? •Are excess spot inks stored for reuse and bar coded to assist tracking? •Is re-blending an option for waste inks?

Solvents and Cleaning Issues

•Use low or no solvent cleaners •Are you using too much blanket/ screen wash? •Are cabinets enclosed? •How is the solvent recycled? Is it on site or is it sent away? •Some drums require ultrasonic assisted cleaning – what would be the payback if you got that installed? •Are solvent dispensers lidded? •How often can the solvent be filtered or distilled to recover it for cleaning? •Compare the amount of ink, paper, energy usage and makeready on your different presses.

Waste

•Effective segregation is key •Compact general waste •Bale recyclables

Energy Use Profiling

•Switch off machinery when not needed – an unloaded machine can consume 40% of rated energy

Harlequin Bookbinding Limited

Specialists in the high quality production of Hardback binding, ring binders, slipcases, presentation boxes and folders, gameboards, showcard mounting, specialist foil blocking, stationery products, short run specials and the fully patented Impressbind system.

Tel: 01 - 839 0963 Fax: 01- 839 1822 E-mail: info@harlequincrafts.ie

Would like to wish all our readers and clients a prosperous 2013

TO ADVERTISE IN THE BUSINESS TO BUSINESS SECTION Contact Fiona Larmon Tel: 01 214 7920 Email: f.larmon@jemma.ie Moble: 086 821 0203

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