ANSTADT PRINTING — DRIVING TOWARDS DIGITAL

September 2006 BY CHRIS BAUER
Managing Editor

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LIKE MANY commercial printers, Anstadt Printing of York, PA, has faced—and continues to encounter—new challenges. The fourth- and fifth- generation family owned and operated independent printer has been in business for 128 years. But, to keep pace with today’s customer demands, Anstadt needed to change with the times.

Anstadt Printing was founded in 1878 as The Anstadt Co. by the Reverend Peter Anstadt. He started the company by printing and publishing a Sunday School Teachers’ Guide. Since then, the establishment has continued to offer more services and add new capabilities.

Now entering its fifth generation of family ownership, the company’s management includes its chairman, Henry Anstadt, who has been with the business for more than 40 years, and its president, Matthew Doran. Anstadt employs 35 to 40 people, including full- and part-time staff.

Recently, the firm began experiencing an increased demand for high-quality, short-run color work that was difficult to competitively produce on its two- and five-color sheetfed offset presses. To handle a wider range of jobs, Anstadt acquired a Presstek 5634 DI digital offset press in May.

With its on-press imaging of plates, fast-drying waterless inks, automation and 300-line screen printing, Doran decided it was a logical investment. The company is now producing more applications using the DI in conjunction with its traditional five-color offset press on the same project.

Prior to acquiring the Presstek unit, the firm was producing jobs of varying run lengths on its five-color press. Pricing structures were geared to making it easy for Anstandt estimators to price a variety of work competitively. But, oftentimes, Anstadt had to turn away the longer runs.

“We could not afford to tie up the press on a 150,000 quantity job because it meant we wouldn’t be able to produce the myriad of other short- to medium-run jobs customers needed in a hurry,” Doran recalls.

Almost all medium- to short-run jobs up to 20,000 are now produced on the DI press, Doran explains, with the five-color dedicated to longer runs. Additionally, Anstadt is frequently using both presses on a job—with the DI press producing color covers, and the five-color press outputting the interior.

Doran cites examples of quantities of 500 to 1,000 75- to 100-page catalogs that Anstadt is able to produce more quickly, efficiently and profitably using the presses in tandem. “We never would have been able to do that work with toner-based digital printing because of the high-quality covers that the customer requires,” he notes.

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