Evergreen Printing Bucks Downturn, Adding New Press and Customers

BELLMAWR, NJ—July 21, 2009—Evergreen Printing is doing what many printers aren't: aiming to increase sales this year by 15%, in their case, planning to reach $26 million. It's headed in the right direction. This heatset and cold web printer of monthly business publications recently won two big newspaper deals.

Evergreen Printing came under new leadership last September when it was purchased by Carmen Pinto. Soon after taking charge of the 95,000-sq.ft. operation, Pinto established a "sales-first" culture.

"My success has always been driven by sales," Pinto says. "So any future growth at Evergreen comes from the efforts of a sales-driven discussion with customers. Being in a recession, I felt it was an opportune time to grow our business." Pinto says his firm's size, operating capacity and staff aggressiveness all pointed to moving full steam head.

No stranger to growing during a recession, Pinto points out that he grew a paper company he owned in the 1980s under similar business conditions.

In February, Evergreen began printing the North American edition of London's The Guardian Weekly. The U.K.-based newspaper, ranging in size from 48- to 64-pages, is printed on 22-lb. newsprint on one of Evergreen's Manugraph DGM 440 coldset presses. Expanded color capabilities offered by the press were key to the deal, and the newspaper now features every page in four-color.

Evergreen also handles circulation fulfillment and subscriber list management for The Guardian, a growing service category for the company. It recently signed a multi-year contract with The Catholic Standard and Times, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, to provide circulation fulfillment services and database management. Evergreen will provide customer service, data entry and multiple report packages that manage the newspaper's subscription base and facilitate additions and changes to the mailing list.

The company just launched a service to offer publishing clients online versions of their printed publications. Branded as GreenView Editions, the digital editions incorporate page-flip technology.

The commercial web offset printer is certainly a case study in success for crossing over into the newspaper printing market. It houses a powerful stable of presses, combined with binding, polybagging, inkjet addressing, mailing and database capabilities.

For non-heatset print jobs, Evergreen operates two DGM440 presses, each with 16 units configured as four, 4-color towers, plus two Goss HV presses with 14 units each and one Goss HV with 16 units.

New Goss M-600 heatset press on the way, plus a Kolbus tipping machine
Heatset work is produced on two manroland Rotoman presses, an 8-unit press and a 6-unit press, equipped with combination folder and sheeter. The firm will install a 5-unit Goss M-600 heatset press this December. A Kolbus tipping machine was also installed this month.

The firm's heatset presses are used to produce gloss covers, gloss supplements and general commercial products including inserts, business reply cards, direct mail pieces and more.

Mailing and fulfillment services, too, are powering growth. Evergreen provides customers with regional, national and international mailing and distribution capabilities. It supports in-house data processing and distribution services through its Publishers Information Center (PIC) unit. PIC capabilities include subscription fulfillment, circulation management, mail list processing, inkjet file preparation, CASS certification and postal form preparation.

Postpress features a Buhrs 3000 polybag system with inkjet, Cheshire label and selective inserting capabilities.

Investing in technological innovation is a staple at Evergreen. The company became a complete computer-to-plate operation in 1998, and uses the latest Kodak Prinergy workflow. The company was a pioneer in perfecting the art of four-color coldset printing in 1979, long before register technology came along and leveled the playing field.