Coaster Kings halves turnaround with Komori

Coaster Kings, NSW coaster printing specialist, is installing a Komori L528 from Printmac Corporation to sharpen turnaround times for its customers.

Based in Ballina, the family-owned business has just hit 19 years of supplying custom coasters to Australian agencies and promotional companies and directly to clubs around the country.

The Komori L528 represents an upgrade from the company’s Heidelberg SORDZ two-colour workhorse, and should halve its turnaround times.

Phil Calnan, owner and director of Coaster Kings, says the company had been looking for a four-colour second-hand press for 12 months before finding the Komori L528 through Printmac.

He says, “We dealt with Paul Carthew and Printmac when we bought the Heidelberg in 2006, so we gave him a call this time around. We looked around for most of last year – these machines are not that easy to get.”

The company decided to go for a second-hand machine to keep a lid on costs. Calnan says the majority of the press market was knocked out from consideration as most machines cannot print on coasterboard.

He tells AP, “When you’re printing coasterboard you can’t just use any press. You need a press that can handle a particular kind of board that’s just under 1mm thick blotting paper, or what’s called beermat board. The Komori presses had a good reputation; we spoke to several people in the industry about them, so we knew they could run coasterboard.

“Moving to a four-colour press will also halve the amount of time we need to run jobs, which is important to our business. We have a pretty good reputation in the industry for turning around jobs when we say they will be done – we take pride in meeting our deadlines with a quality job done on time.

The installation is now in its final stages, with a team from Printmac working on the machine to ensure it produces optimal results.

Last year Coaster Kings picked up two gold awards at the NSW PICAs for innovative business practises and environmental initiatives. Calnan says the company has been Sustainable Green Print certified since 2011, and undergoes an audit to maintain this each year.

He says, “We take the sustainable path wherever we can right through from the inks we use to what goes into landfill – which is basically nothing. Bits of coasterboard that we can’t reuse go into recycling, and we print with vegetable based inks.”

Calnan’s three sons and a daughter-in-law also work in the business and across the family’s second company, Solprom Advertising and Marketing, which mainly produces television advertising for local companies.

Calnan says, “We have our moments as a family but we all work together. Each of the family members is responsible for a specific area, and we come together to collaborate on projects. It works out well.”

GO TO MORE AUSTRALIA NEWS