Wyke Printers, a family owned business based in Kingston-upon-Hull, UK, is known throughout the country as one of the leading litho print service providers. The commercial printer, with 65 employees and an annual turnover of £4 million, operates a “no order too big or too small” service and produces a wide range of jobs from personalised business cards to high value glossy magazines for a number of well-known brands and high street names. A big part of the company’s business also involves printing pattern books and fabric cards for wallpaper companies.
Established in 1972, the company quickly expanded, moving to its current premises in 1980 to accommodate the bigger presses it had invested in. Its press department now comprises one 5-colour and two 6-colour Roland 700 B1 presses, one being a perfector with coating units, as well as a 4-colour Heidelberg B3 press. It also boasts extensive pre-press, digital and finishing departments, making it a great one-stop-shop to satisfy its customers’ various printing needs.
Wyke prides itself on providing consistent, high quality and environmentally friendly print. This, however, became hard to sustain over time as the pre-press department constantly had to remake plates due to the inconsistency of its platesetter, resulting in a great deal of wastage for the company, and affecting its profits.
Peter Hancock, plateroom manager, has been with the company for 26 years and explains why they decided to make the investment with Fujifilm: “Our contract with the previous supplier came to an end so we decided to test a number of other plates and processors over a few months. It very soon became clear that Fujifilm’s FLH-Z 125 processor with Brillia HD LH-PJE plates was the right product for us. Not only did we see fantastic quality and consistency, but the processor is also, in my opinion, the most environmentally friendly option on the market.”
“More and more customers query the environmental impact of our print processes,” continues Peter. “Being environmentally responsible can mean the difference between winning and losing a job to another, more environmentally aware printer, so we are continuously looking at ways to make our printing processes greener.”
The FLH-Z 125 processor is designed primarily for use with Fujifilm’s Brillia HD LH-PJE thermal plates. Incorporating Fujifilm’s latest intelligent ‘ZAC’ microprocessor control system, the processor can achieve consistent, high quality plate production with minimal chemistry usage. Fujifilm’s Brillia HD LH-PJE plate is a long-run, positive working thermal CTP plate that doesn’t require pre-heating or post-baking and is suitable for UV printing without baking. It also has enhanced handling characteristics, minimising plate spoilage.
New Year’s resolutions
Installed in December 2008, Wykes officially started using the ZAC processor with Brillia plates in January 2009. The impact of the new installation was noticed immediately: “We were really impressed at the immediate improvement we saw on our plates – the quality was great, not to mention the consistency!” says Peter.
He continues, “Our chemistry usage is down 30%, which means considerable cost savings as well as lowering our environmental impact. We are also saving a great amount of time as the plate consistency has improved significantly with virtually no remakes any more. Before, we lost 15 minutes every time a plate had to be taken off the press to be remade, which happened fairly often. As we no longer need to remake the plates, our turnaround times are shorter and we can process more jobs during any one day.”
Morning, noon and night
Priding itself on exceptional customer service with short turnaround times, Wyke introduced night shifts in May 2008 in order to be more flexible in accommodating its customers’ needs. The company employed two press managers for the night shifts with the repro department running unsupervised throughout the night.
Peter says the reliability of the Fujifilm plates and processor played a major part in helping Wyke evolve to become a 24-hour-a-day, 6-days-a-week service provider: “Since the installation, we had no problems with the consistency or quality of the plates and we were confident that this would continue to be the case. After a few test runs, the ZAC proved to be extremely reliable in running unattended throughout the night, with less than one percent of plates having to be remade the next day.
Everyone’s happy
Wyke now offers its customers shorter turnaround times and can guarantee high quality with consistent print. Peter concludes: “We are extremely pleased with the improvement we’ve experienced with the ZAC processor and Brillia plates. Since making the decision to run our presses on night shifts as well, we are saving considerably on extra labour costs as the repro department runs unattended during this time – Fujifilm helped us to achieve this. We are extremely pleased with the outcome of our investment in Fujifilm products and look forward to continuing our relationship with them in the future.”