Heidelberg  appointments  business planning 
Heidelberg is celebrating the success of the Stitchmaster (ST) in the Australian and New Zealand market where it has recorded more than 30 sales in the past five years including several multiple unit installations. Since the launch of the ST 300 in Australia in 1999 the revolutionary design, ease of operation and best quality finish has made this an industry-leading piece of machinery.

Rudi Kolbach, Heidelberg Postpress product manager, says, "The Stitchmaster has been extremely well received by our customers. From its reliability and ease of operation through to fast make ready and high quality finishing, the range offers high performance. The design of the range is based on extensive research and development into the finishing needs of today’s printing industry."

The Stitchmaster range is one of many revolutionary finishing products available from Heidelberg, including the Stahlfolder TH, buckle-plate folder and KH, combination folder; the Diana X 135, a completely new generation of folder gluers; the Dymatrix 106 CSB die cutter; and, the Polar-Mohr range of guillotines available in cutting widths of 66cm to 176cm.

"Over the past twelve months Heidelberg has significantly bolstered its range of finishing solutions to offer a range of equipment that covers virtually every possible application," says Kolbach.

Continuing Heidelberg’s commitment to finishing solutions the latest addition to the Stitchmaster range, the ST 350, will be launched in Australia early next year.

According to Kolbach this is Heidelberg’s third new saddlestitcher model in this performance and format range since 1995, which illustrates Heidelberg’s determination to be a major force in post press innovation and technology.

The ST 350 is designed for a wide range of uses covering paper sizes from 305x474mm to 80x120mm finished size.

The unit is controlled using a graphic touchscreen display that gives the user step-by-step support through setup procedures. The ST350 utilises operating panels at each work station to stop, start and inch the machine. Other features include a separate saddle chain drive that allows the saddle chain to be automatically synchronised to the stitcher and the feeders. As a result feeders no longer have to be manually adjusted to the saddle chain reducing setup times.

"The Stitchmaster has a strong pedigree of success in Australia and New Zealand with many of the installations taking place at most leading printers," says Kolbach.

Link Printing
Primarily servicing the financial sector, Link Printing has been able to expand its offer to customers as a direct result of the increased productivity the ST 300, installed in June 2000, has delivered.

Hugh Chisholm, Link Printing general manager, says, "A great deal of our work is very long run DL, A5 and A4 jobs. The ability to run the DL and A5 jobs two-up has had a significant impact on our throughput."

Part of the Blue Star Print Group (BSPG) Link Printing also operates two Speedmaster (SM) 102 – 6 colour presses with perfector function, and has recently installed a SM102 – 8 colour press with a perfector function.

BSPG is an Auckland-based print and marketing communications provider comprising 15 business units with over 1100 staff in Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand.

"The ability to quickly move from one-up to two-up set up is invaluable as we are able to comfortably accommodate our changing saddlestitching needs," says Chisholm.

He adds the reliability and ease of operation of the ST 300 as additional benefits of the unit. "Speed, flexibility, quality, ease of operation and reliability are the key benefits to us. We run the ST 300 18 to 20 hours a day, six days a week. With this volume you need to be confident that the equipment will consistently produce high levels of work."

The Link Printing ST 300 is one of several Stitchmasters installed throughout BSPG; Craftsman Press in Melbourne, and Webstar in Sydney, also have units.

"Having the same equipment throughout the group enables us to ‘job share’ confident that we will achieve the same result irrespective of which plant the job is finished in," says Chisholm.

"We are so pleased with the ST 300 we will be installing another unit later this year enabling us to reap even greater productivity increases. Quality and fast turnaround are paramount to our customers. With the ST 300 we know we will always be able to meet this requirement."

Southern Colour
Since the installation of the ST 300 at their Melbourne based commercial printing and communications business Southern Colour, the company has been able to drastically increase the quality and volume of stitching work produced while at the same time virtually eliminating the need to outsource overflow work as managing director Rod Dawson explains.

"The ST 300 installation highlights our constant and imperative progression in enhancing our manufacturing capabilities and more specifically, in this case, our saddle stitching wherewithal. Demands from our clients are such that we have to continuously be increasing our speeds and quality output in order to keep exceeding their expectations," Dawson says.

Based in Keysborough, in Melbourne’s east, Southern Colour has been in business for 15 years and today employs 60 plus staff. The company is co-owned by Rod Dawson and Impact Printing, which holds a majority share. Southern Colour and Impact Printing operate as two separate entities; however their combined sheet fed capacity "makes our group one of the largest privately owned operations in Australia, with the finest state-of-the-art equipment and systems going around," says Dawson.

Servicing major corporations, the publishing industry, advertising houses and print managers, Southern Colour produces a wide assortment of communications materials and services on its stable of four Heidelberg presses, from stationery through to annual reports, plus other services required by its demanding customer base.

"Southern Colour has the reputation of being a high quality service provider and to be able to achieve these standards and to provide the solutions our customers need, we rely on having the best equipment, staff and processes, hence our decision to install the ST 300," Dawson says.

Dawson highlights one of the key benefits of the ST 300 as being the ability to produce DL work two-up "and can double our production capacity. We also opted to install a drill adjustment mechanism, which has enabled us to successfully offer calendar work to our customers."

With its ST 300, Southern Colour also utilises a stacker and vertical feeders within the machine, which enables the company to run very large jobs with high levels of efficiency and accuracy.

"The overall features, quality, reliability and productivity improvements of the ST 300 have made this capital equipment acquisition work for our customers and a very valuable addition to our top notch equipment capabilities thereby helping us to achieve our main business goal, ie. satisfying our customers’ ever-changing needs," says Dawson.

Complete Colour
Since the installation of a ST 300 in January 2003 Melbourne-based Complete Colour Printing has clocked-up a massive nine million stitched books.

Geoff Lawyer, general manager, says this high level of throughput coincides with massive productivity improvements. "Prior to the installation of the ST 300 large run jobs were taking 20 hours to complete, now they can be processed in eight hours a massive saving which also frees-up the machine for increased volumes."

Established in 1992 Complete Colour Printing specialises in the production of a wide range of promotional material for a diverse customer base spanning designers and agencies through to large corporations and the financial sector.

In addition to the ST 300 Complete Colour Printing also operates a Speedmaster CD102-5 colour press, Speedmaster SM 74-5 colour press, a Speedmaster SM-102-5 colour press with perfector function, a Stahlfolder TD78 , K66 folder , Stahlfolder TI 52 Proline and three Polar Stacklifts.

"The ST 300 has increased our finishing capacity by 60 percent and reduced make-ready times by 50 percent," says Lawyer.

With the added functionality of a stacking feature Complete Colour Printing has been able to successfully expand its operations into new markets.

"We are now able to complete jobs that just would not have been possible before. We can confidently bid for long-run work knowing it won’t put our systems under pressure," says Lawyer.

The ST 300 runs up to 13,000 cycles per hour with three feeder configurations. Lawyer says that this, along with its two-up stitching device, has enabled Complete Colour to compete effectively for larger volume work.

He cites a recent job in which the ability to run a job two-up halved production time. "A 200,000 run 16 page DL booklet was recently put through the ST 300. We were running 10,200 cycles per hour, but with the work laid out two-up we were effectively able to output at double that rate."

Lawyer also praises the ease of operation of the ST 300. "We are able to better utilise our workforce so that they can be multi-tasked with the skills to operate several pieces of equipment. As a result we have greater efficiencies for both the equipment and personnel."

"The impact the ST 300 has had on our operations is quite phenomenal. The machine is run almost constantly over two shifts and we can take-on a wider variety of work knowing that we can get the job done," he concludes.

Kolbach says, "The continued success of this unit reflects its superior engineering, flexibility and quality; features that extend across the Stitchmaster range. With the next generation model soon to be available locally we can anticipate more success stories in the future."