A Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor Press Helps Jakprints Attract a Creative Crowd

KENNESAW, Ga.—September 17, 2015—After installing a Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor press in May, Jakprints Inc., based in Cleveland, went from two presses to one with a 30 percent increase in production capacity and anticipated savings of up to one million sheets this year alone.

The company, which caters to a diverse artistic community as well as to big business, had no desire to invest in a traditional litho press when it went shopping to replace an existing sheetfed offset machine earlier this year. The company already had two aging offset presses from another manufacturer.

That was before company principals got a look at the Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor at Heidelberg’s Technology Center in Kennesaw, Georgia, and realized how the new press could help Jakprints lock in a serious competitive advantage based on quality, versatility, pricing and the ecological ethos it shares with clients.

Company representatives brought 12 jobs representing a typical eight-hour shift to their demonstration in Kennesaw. Using the XL 75 Anicolor press, the work was completed in less than an hour-and-a-half, each with between 20 and 30 sheets of makeready waste. For Jakprints, the potential to reduce 6,500 sheets of waste per day on makeready alone, while simultaneously adding six hours per day of production capacity, was too compelling to pass up. Ultimately, the company chose a five-color, carbon-neutral-rated model with coater and extended delivery.

Magnifying the Menu
Independently owned and operated Jakprints specializes in making high-quality custom printing accessible to customers—CEO Nick DeTomaso names artists, small businesses, musicians, churches and tattoo parlors—with a keen eye for top quality, but occasionally more imagination than budget. Accessibility and craftsmanship are the operative words here, and the versatile Anicolor is helping Jakprints extend an expanded menu of options to its creative customers.

Four months into production, the company’s XL 75 Anicolor can be set up to print coated or textured paper, board or envelopes in five-10 minutes, much faster than a conventional press, with only 20-30 waste sheets, depending on the job, DeTomaso said. With a “typical” job in the range of 500-1,000 sheets, the company can run 20-30 jobs a day over three shifts, “including what for us are ‘monster’ jobs in the tens of thousands of sheets,” showing that the XL 75 Anicolor’s strengths can be exploited over both short and long runs.

In particular, DeTomaso lauds the XL 75’s “spectacular” stock handling and up to 90 percent waste reduction capabilities.  “We’ve increased our capabilities largely because of the thicker stocks we can run (up to 32-pt. card stock) and the significant waste reduction we’ve seen with the XL 75 Anicolor,” he explained. “We’ll save up to one million sheets this year alone. That’s also one million sheets we won’t have to de-ink and recycle. The XL 75 Anicolor lowers the barrier to entry in terms of cost, while we get a leg up on the competition, because we can produce unique and unusual products affordably. Our clients love that, and that inspires us to be more creative with this marvelous tool.”

DeTomaso and JakPrints recently showed off their new addition to admiring graphic designers and other print creatives during tours of their facility conducted for the annual “Weapons of Mass Creation Fest” held earlier this month in Cleveland. “The 52” Wallscreen on the press was a center of attention,” DeTomaso relayed. “Heidelberg is in ‘pole position’ as far as brand recognition in the graphic design community is concerned. Needless to say, they were very impressed with the Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor.”

An Earth-friendly Press for an Earth-friendly Shop
The carbon-neutral rated Speedmaster XL 75 also appealed to Jakprints’ environmental conscience. The company not only claims that its emphasis on environmental responsibility resonates with clients, but it also plants a tree with every order through its affiliation with Trees for the Future. It only made sense for the company to choose an earth-friendly press designed for economy and with sustainability built in.

In fact, Anicolor technology proves that eco-friendliness and economy are not mutually exclusive. The carbon-neutral-manufactured Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor combines up to 90 percent paper savings with a short, 1:1 anilox ink train that brings the press to color in as few as 20 sheets.

“We achieve total color stability on the Anicolor with four color printing plus one spot,” DeTomaso commented. “We have some distance to go with fluorescent and metallic inks, but that will come with time and experience. We’ll continue to refine the way we use the new press.”

A Revenue Booster
The company cleared one early hurdle by encouraging its pressmen—used to on-press tweaking and manual adjustment—to relax a bit and let the Anicolor do its thing. “Our pressmen have learned to trust the machine,” DeTomaso said. “At the moment, there’s a lot of cross-training going on from shift to shift.”

The company retained one of its conventional offset presses “for redundancy and peace of mind,” DeTomaso said, “but the reality is that the Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor is handling our three-shift, five-day workload just fine—with capacity to spare.”

While the new Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor press admirably reflects Jakprints’ operating philosophy, customer service model and environmental sensibility, it has also become an engine of productivity and profit. DeTomaso estimates that savings derived from the company’s use of the Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor will boost Jakprints’ sales revenue from $25 million in 2014 to $30 million by the end of the year.

Source: Heidelberg.