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

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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 Get the latest news every Monday morning: eepurl.com/dEneu www.printbusinessmagazine.co.uk June 2012 15
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 16 June 2012 www.printbusinessmagazine.co.uk Get the latest news every Monday morning: eepurl.com/dEneu
Page 1: CovEr story John Knight and Gary Kn

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

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