Speedmaster 52 Installation improves productivity for suburban printer

In a highly competitive market where turnaround times are tight and quality essential, it is no longer viable for small printers to produce full colour work on two colour machines and expect to increase productivity and profitability.


Dor Tu, Shane Hanlon and Najdet Dumanli of Auscard Printing

This has certainly been the experience for Dor Tu and Najdet Dumanli, co-owners of Auscard Printing which is located in the busy Melbourne suburb of Camberwell.
Auscard was formed seven years ago. They installed a Heidelberg GTO 52-2 in 2000 to service what was predominantly a one-colour business card market. "The GTO was brilliant and really met the needs of the one and two colour market perfectly," says Dor.

However, with an increasing client base and a rise in demand for two and full colour work, the company began to struggle with turnaround times as they were producing all of their work on their original GTO, which Dor says, "the jobs ended up being sold for almost what it costs us."

Aware that they needed to upgrade their equipment to remain profitable, Dor and Najdet visited a Heidelberg trade day, where they learned first hand of the benefits and capabilities of the Heidelberg Speedmaster for a business of their size. "After hearing about the margins and profitability achieved using a Speedmaster we were convinced that the only way forward was to install a SM52-4-SE," said Dor.

Since the installation of the SM52-4-SE Auscard Printing has experienced a massive increase in their productivity. "Being able to print in one pass has slashed turnaround times and our workloads dramatically. For example, a run of 400,000 double-sided A3 colour brochures took three weeks to complete when we ran it on the GTO. Running the same job (800,000 impressions) on the SM52-4-SE took only 3 days!" exclaims Najdet, who is also the Printer for Auscard Printing.

"These productivity improvements have not only resulted in greater job profitability, but have given us the ability to be more competitive in both turnaround and quality. We currently do a large volume of personal work such as wedding stationery, as well as jobbing work," explains Najdet. "With our new capabilities we are now able to broaden our offer and target more corporate work."

Dor expands saying, "for us to be able to run our business successfully we need a bigger slice of the corporate pie. The Speedmaster enables us to produce quality work within the time frames that these clients demand and increase our profit margins."

In addition to targeting corporate work, the registration accuracy of the SM52-4-SE will allow Auscard Printing to pursue more of the Chinese language printing. "The SM52-4-SE produces such good quality that we hope to be able to produce more colour work in Chinese characters which requires excellent registration due to their complexity," he says.

The Auscard Printing SM52-4 SE has been installed with a "Classic console" (formerly known as CPC 1.04). "This provides small printers with the opportunity to enter the four colour market backed by the confidence of Heidelberg without having to enter the higher technology of CP2000," says Shane Hanlon, Heidelberg Product manager for A3 Solutions.

"By offering different console options for the Speedmaster range we are better able to meet customer’s demands – from entry level to large companies, we can tailor the installation to suit," he says.

The SM52-4-SE is a fully automated press with automated plate change, remote register including cylinder cocking, automated impression cylinder, blanket and roller wash devices and is capable of 13,000 impressions per hour.

"The classic console allows me to operate the press the way I want to in order to get our jobs done," says Najdet. "I am very pleased with the press – work gets completed so quickly we hardly know what to do with ourselves!"

"We are confident that with the excellent productivity and quality we are now able to achieve, we will successfully penetrate new markets securing our future," he concludes.