In between the blankets: Print 21 magazine article

Printing blankets are an essential component of the offset printing process but remain one of the most overlooked sectors in the industry. Unlike other print consumables such as ink, the printing blanket has resisted the drift towards becoming just another commodity, but just where they come from and who supplies them is anything but clear. Patrick Howard takes a look at what lies beneath.

Despite its relatively low profile, the printing blanket sector in the region is a substantial and fairly lucrative business. Every offset press, both web and sheetfed, requires blankets, the same with metal decorating and other specialty printing presses. Often overlooked as a defining component in printing performance, a cheap blanket can cause havoc in daily operations well before it tears itself apart, possibly causing major damage to the press. Some printers are religious in keeping blankets in tip-top condition, paying for quality and changing them regularly. Others simply regard them as part of the press, to run until they disintegrate.

Best estimates as to the size of the printing blanket sector in the local market have it around 120,000 square metres per annum. With barred blankets selling for an average $140 per metre2  this makes it into a $16 million sector, at least. Upwards of 20 suppliers compete for the market and while there may be a myriad number of blanket types on offer, a few large multi-national companies dominate the play.

In fact a major consolidation in the manufacturing of printing blankets globally this year has yet to make an impact in the local market. One of the largest and possibly the oldest manufacturer, the Swedish-based Trelleborg Group of Companies, bought the offset printing blanket business of US flexo plate and printing consumables supplier MacDermid. When added to its 2006 takeover of the Reeves Group of companies, which makes the high-profile Vulcan brand, this produced the world’s largest supplier of the essential printing consumable. In different markets around the world this has had the effect of consolidating the product lines and the marketing logistics, producing the well-recognised benefit of takeovers – rationalisation.

Not so in the Australian marketplace where DS Chemport, the Fujifilm subsidiary, is the Reeves agent supplying its iconic Vulcan brand. The expectation was it would pick up the business of the MacDermid range too, ensuring its position as one of the two major suppliers here. MacDermid ceded its distribution role along with its ownership in most other markets around the world.

But due to a quirk in the takeover contract, MacDermid’s Printing Supplies in Australia continues to handle the wide range of blankets here under the well-known Rollin band. This is despite DS Chemport claiming to have the largest blanket cutting and barring facility in the country.

According to Tony Dalleore, general manager, MacDermid Printing Solutions, the original contract has some years to run. He professes the desire to continue to make sure his customers receive uninterrupted service in what has always been a very successful operation.

“The Rollin brand name has strong goodwill and is used across many facets of the commercial blanket markets,” he said.

So near and yet …
There is a certain note of frustration in Ken Rendell’s tone when he describes the situation. As associate director at DS Chemport, he believes the company is best placed to promote the MacDermid brand in Australia along with its range of Vulcan plates and name brand chemistry.

“We are the largest supplier of printing blankets in the country and we have more than sufficient capacity in our new facility to handle the extra work. It would make perfect sense for us to handle the distribution,” he said.

DS Chemport, through its parent Fujifilm, is playing an ever-larger role in the printing and graphic arts industry. It has invested considerable sums in its new facility at Campbellfield, north of Melbourne, following a disastrous fire two years ago. It has its own proprietary brands of printing chemistry, a vigorous R&D laboratory and the aforementioned blanket cutting and barring factory. Rendell looks at the situation around the world where MacDermid made a clean break with its offset printing blanket business and champs at the missed opportunity in the local market.

The anomalous situation of DS Chemport and MacDermid is indicative of the way the printing blanket sector flies below the radar. The other major supplier in Australia is Day International, a division of Flint Ink, one of the largest ink manufacturers in the world. It supplies the well-known dayGraphica, davidM, and Duco brands through a number of agents, notably DIC – the other major ink manufacturer in Australia –  along with Servicom Pacific and, through them, CPI.

Since the takeover of Day International by Flint two years ago, no obvious attempt has been to integrate the two companies in the region, with both continuing to operate independently. This gives rise to the situation whereby Flint Ink does not overtly supply printing blankets while its rival ink manufacturers, DIC and DIC Colortron, advertise dayGraphica products to their customers both in Australia and in New Zealand. The other major Day International printing blanket brand, davidM, is sold through Servicom Pacific.

Movement at the station
Hard data on market shares is hard to come by but general industry agreement has DS Chemport, MacDermid and Day International supplying the lion’s share of printing blankets to Australia and NZ, if solely on a wholesale basis. But printing blankets are such a ubiquitous product and because there are supposedly good margins to be made in their supply, there are a number of smaller players eager to get among it on a retail and importers’ level.

While small companies may carry only a specialised inventory, larger suppliers carry numerous variations of blankets within a wide range of prices that are mostly to do with the level of compressibility and consequent smash recoverability. (Top quality five-ply blankets can cost over $200 metre2.) Servicom Pacific, which dubs itself, the big guns in printing blankets, supplies blankets from three different manufacturers, Printec, (a Day International product out of Brazil), Phoenix  from German-based Conti Group, and Italian-based Novurania. It ranks itself as second in volume to Day International in Australia.

JL Lennard is another major supplier, which according to Tony Colella, general manager, is embarking on an aggressive bid to increase its market share. It has recently switched brands from Japanese-made Fujikura to importing the Slovenia-based Sava products. While the politics are opaque, suffice it to say that JL Lennard is currently in the business of converting its customer base over to the more expensive Sava product. According to Colella, it is proving a success with 75 printers making the switch in recent months.

The Currie Group picked up the high-profile Fujikura agency and is well-placed to capitalise on it through its own extensive customer base. It supplies not only the presses to the small and mid-size offset sector but also a range of printing plates and chemistry. It has long seen the addition of a respected brand of blanket as a good strategic move.

“We've been looking for the right product to complete our line-up and Fujikura is a well-established brand that has the track record we’re looking for,” said Andrew Matthews, national sales manager consumables. “There are not too many brands that have been around for as long as Fujikura, which shows it is a solid, reliable blanket that printers appreciate.”

The job of the Currie Group is not made any easier by a considerable amount of stock of Fujikura still in the JL Lennard warehouse.

For those who came in late …
Offset press blankets are made from layers of rubber composite and fabric. (For some web offset blankets a thin layer of metal backing may replace the fabric normally used.) The rubber compound is made with different ‘honeycomb’ technologies allowing the layer to compress – rubber itself does not compress but is pushed out of shape, or ‘nipped’. Depending on the levels of compression, blankets are described as either soft or hard, with either a rough or smooth finish. Practically all printing blankets now have some level of compressibility. This helps to eliminate smashing the blankets when numerous sheets of paper or a foreign body squeezes through the press and ‘smashes’ the blankets.

Finding the right blanket for a press is a matter of trial and error. Often it depends on the combination of press chemistry, the main type of substrate being printed on a daily basis and even the length of the print runs. Theoretically there is an optimum printing blanket for every press and every job, but in practice a printer will settle on the blanket that gives the greatest scope for the type of work going through the press.

There appears to be no widespread agreement among printers on the standard life of a printing blanket. Blankets can be contaminated in as little as a few weeks, or smashed on the first day they are changed. They can also run safely and well for hundreds of thousands or even millions of impressions without problem.

On a sheetfed press, blankets can be changed on individual towers without impact on the other stations. A large web press, which has numerous blankets, will generally be subject to a total changeover whenever there is call in order to maintain stability. While not a difficult job to change, printers mainly do not feel the urge to experiment with different blanket products without a compelling reason.

According award-winning printer, Steve Pettaras at Pettaras Press, while it’s a matter of a few minutes to renew a blanket there is no good reason to change unless someone offers a new product that has significant benefits. He believes there is no substitute for experience and testing in deciding on the type of blankets to run. Confident in his ability to swap and change in order to fine-tune the operation of the pressroom, he maintains it is important to keep an open mind to new products and not be afraid of change.

“There’s not much to it, if you know what you’re doing. While it is important to have the right products you should be prepared to give new solutions a go if there is a compelling offer,” he said.

Significantly he is a long-term Fujikura customer who is scoping the possibility of changing to Sava.

Getting the bundles right
Printing blankets are rarely sold as a one-out product. They invariably come as part of a package with chemistry, including blanket washes, possibly plates and ink, and sometimes printing rollers. The package is presented as comprising compatible elements in order to ensure stability and long running life. In reality there are so many variables between ink and paper and blanket washes that there is no ‘one solution fits all’.

However, it is no coincidence that the two major printing roller suppliers, Brissett Rollers and Böttcher are also very active in blankets and chemistry. Fitting composite covered rollers to a printing press that is using your blankets and chemistry makes sense. JL Lennard supplies Katsura rollers as part of its solution.

Just about all major press suppliers, including Heidelberg, have their own branded consumables range, even if not too many invest in establishing their own cutting and barring factories. For this essential service, most rely on Mamdooh Sidhom’s National Barring Company in Sydney, an independent service provider that cuts and bars blankets for almost all suppliers. NBC is the largest processor of blankets in the region with an estimated 60 percent of the market. It does not sell direct to printers but rather customises the printing blankets it receives from the individual suppliers, barring and branding them to suit.

There is no discrimination at NBC, they’ll supply everyone, including competitors such as Day International, DS Chemport, Queensland-based Pressroom Graphics, Brissett Rollers, Böttcher, DIC, Seaga and Toyo Inks. While a number of suppliers such as Servicom, DS Chemport and Brissett Rollers, have their own cutting rooms, most don’t have the ability to meet their entire demand. There are few printing blanket suppliers who have not found it useful at some stage to outsource the work to Mamdooh, who takes great pride in giving blanket coverage to all.