John Knight and Gary Knight are steering Anton Group steadily ...

CovEr story
John Knight and
Gary Knight are
steering Anton
Group steadily
through its smooth
move into new
waters. this is the
result of adding
stream inkjet heads
to a Heidelberg
speedmaster to
deliver personalised
print at litho quality
and speeds.
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Anton Group
Anton
on course
It is set to be a busy summer at Anton
Group as the Essex company manages
the installation of its next Heidelberg
Speedmaster, its next CMC enclosing
lines, its latest Nexpress and most importantly
four more Kodak Stream inkjet heads.
This investment comes on top of a first
27,000cph CMC line, the first Agfa Avalon
N8-80 high speed platesetters in Europe,
two MBO folders and will be followed by
two more Speedmaster XL106s, in January
and June next year.
And it hAs hAd its first four Kodak
Stream heads mounted on a Heidelberg
Speedmaster to run, to test and to prepare for
an open day in September when Anton really
begins the marketing push on a technology
which continues to change the business.
“It’s a competitive world and we still need
to compete,” chief executive John Knight
says. “From 2008 we have concentrated
on winning more work from the clients we
already have. Now with the new presses
coming we want to spread the net wider.
There is less work about and we want to win
more of it. The technology we are buying
will give us the vital competitive edge.”
there is A MAnchester sales office
and team of three new reps headed by Simon
Leeder who has positions at St Ives and Polestar
on his belt, having left Anton 12 years
ago. With his appointment, Anton is clearly
thinking about bigger jobs and a bigger
customer base with a different type of work.
There is a clue in the firmly locked room to
one end of the vast factory space that Anton
occupies just off what used to be called the
Southend Arterial Road, the A127, and a few
minutes from the M25. The room can only
be entered by those with the correct accreditations,
so it needs a nose pressed against the
window to spot mono and Nexpress digital
machines, a Duplo System 5000 bookletmaker
and other finishing equipment to
make this a self-contained environment.
eAch night hAlf the rooM
becomes even more secure when the company
receives a job file with account details for a
client in the financial services industry. The
statements are printed, enclosed and in the
mail within hours. And nobody talks about
what happens behind the doors.
All of a sudden Anton is taking a different
type of print job, where security becomes as
important as quality and service and the ISO
27001 standard that Anton now has applies
to the whole business. A gatehouse stops
and checks vehicles coming in and anyone
who wants to enter the factory has to leave
their phone in a small cabinet in reception
designed for the purpose.
An it teAM hAs been added with the
purpose of managing the data that is now
as a vital a part of what Anton does as the
presses, folders and mailing lines.
The company has always handled some
personalised print through digital presses,
either a Scitex inkjet system for adding data
to litho printed sheets, or Nexpress colour
machines and other mono presses.
This has grown to the point where Anton
has bought its eighth and ninth Nexpress at
Drupa, but more interestingly, it has taken
volume personalisation from being a post
print operation to one that takes place on
press. This is thanks to successful trials with
Kodak Stream inkjet heads mounted on a
Heidelberg Speedmaster sheetfed press.
It is, with this technology, merging high
quality colour printing with high quality
variable data statement printing.
Pressroom director Gary Knight calls it
“Digilitho”. He has been responsible for the
development over the last six months, from
the gleam of an idea into something that is
pushing the limitations of digital printing.
“We bought the Kodak heads knowing that
if it didn’t work we could use them as flatbed
printers or on the folders. And the first time
we tried it, it didn’t work,” he says. “We
have now adapted a piece of machinery and
we are using it day in and day out. And we
are using it at the full speed of the press.”
developMent is continuing.
The company has trialled (with success)
printing on different types of paper and is
testing different combinations of drying to
make sure the paper is dry before it enters
the press. Any concerns that the dampening
solution or inks used would affect the inkjet
print have proved groundless.
The arrangement Gary Knight and Kodak
have come up with takes the web of paper
from the unwind unit of a CutStar and feeds
this up to the four inkjet head array mounted
above the press before returning the web
to the CutStar’s knives and printing in the
standard way. As yet Anton is printing in
black only and with four heads in place, can
only print across half the sheet. A further
four will arrive in July to allow Anton to
stitch together the heads to allow it to cover
the whole sheet if needed.
What it has now is the second version
of the superstructure, and that was a step
forward on Anton’s first experience of
personalising litho print at high speed.
Three years ago the company won a contract
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CovEr story
to provide numbered ballot papers for overseas
governments. Rather than print and
add the unique numbers on a folder or on
the offline Scitex systems, Anton planned
to print on the presses. The plan resulted in
sleepless nights and a frantic last few days as
the job arrived.
John Knight explains: “The size and scale
of the job was such that we would never
have done it in time if we had used an offline
numbering system, either on folders or the
Scitex. So we asked ourselves ‘Could we put
it on the CutStar?’ and answered ‘All we can
do is try it’. We had 48 hours to turn the
work around. We did it and have spent the
next two years talking about how we could
do it with better quality. What we had done
was good enough for numbering, but not for
direct mail.”
the developMent is already opening
doors that had been shut against pure digital
printing because it has been too slow or
too expensive even though Anton has yet to
start marketing what it can do. John Knight
explains that designers no longer have to
compromise to cope with inkjet personalisation.
“It was not possible to overprint on
yellow, so designers had to understand this.
Now we print the black first, there is no
restrictions on the design,” he says.
Moreover the combination of inkjet and
offset will be much cheaper than inkjet
alone, simply because inkjet ink is eight
times more expensive than litho ink, and
there will be no queries about colour quality.
Currently the top speed of 5,000-6,000
sheets an hour under the Scitex inkjet heads
is restrictive and this consequently has to be
allowed for at the estimating and scheduling
stage. With this step becoming part of the
sheetfed printing at 15,000sph, scheduling
instantly becomes much easier and customers
receive a better service.
“coMbining personAlisAtion
with the printing process is far more efficient
and there is less waste,” John Knight
continues. “For example some clients will
preorder 150,000 products but then find
there is only data for 120,000, resulting in
30,000 that have to be thrown away. Then if
the initial run is 4 million and there is only
data for a mailing of 2.9 million, this new
way of working provides a huge saving in
terms of wasted time and material.
“The net result is that our turnover per
job might go down, but we expect to win
more work through doing it this way. The
client’s bill will come down, but we should
be able to add to our bottom line.”
Clients have accepted the old way of
Gary Knight has supervised the
project to place Kodak stream
heads on to the Heidelberg Cutstar
before printing on the litho press.
the work has put Anton ahead of
even the press manufacturers in
running a hybrid press at full speed.
Investment in presses and digital
printheads has been matched by
spending on new folders.
working because personalisation is proven to
generate better returns than standard print
but data handling needs time and that is the
enemy of relevant direct mail.
The new method of working will also
offer faster turnaround and response to
clients, John Knight explains. After an initial
batch of mailers is sent out, the messaging
can be changed as the results begin to be
received three days later and implemented
for the bulk of the mailing.
this kind of working demands that
the entire production is geared towards high
speed and volume. The XL106 machines
that will start to replace the SM102s run
at 18,000sph, and are reckoned to be 30%
more productive than its XL105s. This puts
pressure on the finishing side, hence the
investment in the latest MBO folders, able
to handle three-up and four-up products
rather than just one-up and two-up production.
Crucially it means to ensuring that
plates are ready on time.
At one time, when Anton needed three
platesetters to match demand from the
Speedmasters, it would run plates well ahead
of press time, effectively 100 plates at a time.
Now it can move from prepress to a full set
of plates within ten minutes and makes
plates on demand. Gary Knight explains:
“Because we are making plates faster and
better we can leave this until ten minutes
before press. We can press the start button
and by the time we are downstairs there are
12 plates ready for press.”
Scheduling and customer response is
further improved because the planning
operation can decide late in the day which
press and therefore which plate format will
be used. When plates were exposed ahead
of time, this level of flexibility did not exist.
To achieve this the company has installed
the first Avalon N-80 65 plates an hour
machines in Europe. These expose the low
chemistry processed Energy Elite plates
which go straight to press. Plate life is
comfortably 750,000 impressions.
And As A further benefit the
spent chemistry is non toxic and Anglia
Water “considers the waste to be of a level
that they will accept to go down the drain”
he adds. “The water authority came and
carried out tests which resulted in us receiving
a certificate to say how we could dispose
of the waste. This means we don’t have to
ship waste for processing which is good for
the environment through saving on truck
journeys and a nice cost saving for us.”
The spent chemistry is sent to a holding
tank to be combined with waste water from
the presses before it is drained off. All the
presses now run without IPA in the fount,
Anton having reduced IPA levels from
10-11% 18 months ago to 5% then 3% and
finally zero with the help of Stehlin Hostag
dealer Trilogy. The latest presses have never
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used IPA, Gary Knight says. “It’s a £40,000
cost saving in IPA alone and there’s a saving
on the insurance also.”
The two platesetters are housed in a new
unit run by Alan Ludlow. “He has been with
us for 20 years and knows the importance
of the plate, which is recognisable from
the cleanliness of the machines,” says John
Knight. The attention to maintenance pays
off in terms of reliable plate production.
Anton gets through 7,000 plates a month
at current levels. If the strategy of winning
extra jobs at shorter run lengths is a success,
this volume is likely to increase.
“we expect this to hAve an impact
the same impact as the CutStar did,” says
John Knight. It will make Anton more
competitive on long run jobs at the same
time as run lengths are moving away from
web presses.
The inkjet heads will be printing the letters
that used to be laser printed, able to change
greyscale images as well as text, perhaps
altering the name to that of the prospect on
an image of a credit card at high speed. This
will make not just Anton more relevant, but
direct mail in particular. The chief executive
notes a swing back to print away from email
or non measurable marketing media.
“Clients are becoming more choosy about
when print is working for them. Now we can
stop a job and see what response the mailer
has received before changing the message
or the offer. The Nexpress is very good for
short runs, but that’s not been possible if
you want to do higher volumes.
“Customers can see response rates change
and react very quickly. It is this speed to
market that puts litho back in play. Previously
we could only personalise 5,000 an
hour, and a job might take days. Now we are
hoping to get 2 million envelopes in the post
each day.”
The CMC lines it has will run at 27,000 cph
and at the moment the company is enclosing
1.2 million a day with capacity for 1.5 million
a day. The aim is to fill this with new work,
jobs that require high speed digital printing
and which have previously been produced
on continuous feed laser or inkjet presses,
namely transactional or more specifically
Anton Group
transpromotional work. This is where the
new business sales team will be focusing.
To do so is taking a further £20 million
investment in the next three years, coming
on top of the £40 million that Anton has
spent with Heidelberg in the last decade.
The constant renewal has been welcomed
by employees who see some protection in a
company that is prepared to invest.
“consequently we haven’t had the
problems that companies that don’t take
on new technology have had,” John Knight
says. “The message is clear that if we didn’t
go with it, someone else will and that might
mean not having a job. We have invested
millions of pounds to stay in business.
“In the last years we have not had the
returns that we would have liked, mostly
because of the challenging times.
“Now we are going out to sell the idea of
what we have achieved. We have waited until
everything was in place. Now for anyone to
catch up with us they will have to invest a
lot of money. If we still want to be here, it’s
what we have to do.” n
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