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

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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