Currie & HP power world 1st print line

The world leading technology mix includes a web-fed HP PageWide T410 inkjet, a HP Indigo 10000 B2 sheetfed digital press and HP Indigo 7800 digital press, all supplied by Currie Group. In addition a Scodix Ultra Pro digital embellisher with foil station as well as a Kolbus web folder and perfect binder finishing line combine to create a one-off book printing line that can turn out embellished books down to a print run of one.

Peter George, PMP managing director, officially launched the digital book printing line at the company’s premises in South Australia last week, declaring the company is taking the fight up to foreign imports of printed books. With a large proportion of book runs falling into single figures, the ability of overseas printers to compete with local short run production is greatly reduced.

He maintains that even the threat from the Productivity Commission to remove parallel import restrictions no longer poses the same level danger to the geared-up local printing and publishing industry. “I’d still want to see the restrictions maintained but the market has moved on and we’ve positioned ourselves to be able to compete into the future,” he said.

Griffin Press now holds 75,000 digital book files, ensuring that those titles need never be out of print. “This print line is a real game changer for us and for the industry,” said George.

Although Griffin has printed many of its text pages on the HP Pagewide Inkjet for some time, the success of the full digital print line can be seen in the numbers of sheets and jobs going through since it started colour cover production five months ago.  In that time the HP Indigo 10000 has become the most productive press of its kind in the world, pumping through over four million book covers. On average it is now printing 51,000 colour sheets over 20 to 30 jobs per day.

According to John Nichols, chief operating officer, who originally came up with the unique line configuration, the press passed its yearly duty cycle in just over five months. Tasked with transitioning the company to the new short-run environment and after failing to find any book production plant in the world taking full advantage of the HP digital technology, he assembled the Griffin line with the help of Currie Group and Steve Donegal, regional manger – HP Indigo/Pagewide.

In other digital book printing lines the mono book blocks are held on the factory floor for days waiting the return of coated and embellished covers. In the Griffin line the covers are produced on the two HP Indigo presses, before being embellished on the Scodix and delivered to the Kolbus line to await the inkjet printed book blocks from the HP PageWide T410.

In theory, every book, no matter if it’s a print-run of one, can be coated and embellished to the same level as a title with a major long print run. Nichols claims the glossy raised embellishment can be anything from 200 to 500 microns thick.

The same level of individuation is seen in the Kolbus perfect binding line. According to Rob Dunnett, CEO Currie Group, the line can manufacture books of different sizes and widths on the fly. It never slows down to adjust for individual books but can maintain its 5000 books per hour with alternating sizes.

Kai Büntemeyer, managing partner, Kolbus, who attended the official launch, confirmed the Griffin Press, HP and Kolbus, production line combination is unique. He intends to bring international customers to South Australia to witness the technology in operation.

“No one else is doing this anywhere. For the present time it is unique in the world and will be of great interest to people everywhere,” he said.

Perhaps most pleased of all was Ben Jolly, sales manager of Griffin Press, who showed visitors around the plant like a proud father. He pointed out the features of the high-speed inkjet PageWide T410 with its ability to deliver 300 metres a minute of 16-pages up.

Steve Donegal,  wound up the opening with a presentation of how “HP is changing the future.” He paid tribute to PMP for making the decision to adopt the new technology in order to meet the changing market of more titles with fewer copies. The solution focuses on shorter turnaround time, lower inventories and backlist management.

Claiming that eCommerce has actually increased the amount of print, he left us with the vote of confidence that, “HP will never get out of print.”

The launch of the Griffin book printing line made it onto the ABC news in SA, while PMP put together its own video that includes a time lapse sequence featuring the development of the site.

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