The independant family-owned print company is supposed to be on its knees as a model for a successful mid-sized business. Equally there is reckoned to be no money in general commercial print, so the advice from business consultants is that companies should find a niche to specialise in. Thirdly, a mixed environment of sheetfed and web presses is too difficult to manage and so printers should stick with one process or the other. By rights Ancient House Press should not exist.
But it does, confounding the consultants by being a profitable family-owned business with sales of £14 million and rising, by being a commercial printer and proud to be one and finally by having two long perfecting B1 presses and a 16pp web to put ink on paper on behalf of a wide range of regular clients across a variety of sectors. Two of these presses have been installed in the last three years as the major part of £4 million invested in the business. More investment, though perhaps not on this scale, will follow.
Allison Berry and Michael Underdown, brother and sister, are joint managing directors of the Ipswich company. Their father Peter Underdown, who bought the 150-year old company when moving a print business from London in the 1970s, remains chairman. His move was part of the spread of print from the capital which saw businesses moving from congested inner city sites to airier premises outside London, but with easy access to the clients. For Ancient House Press this is fulfilled by both the A12 and the railway which is 55 minutes from Liverpool Street.
The major spending has seen a 16pp five-unit Komori 38S web replace two mini webs in 2005 and this year a 12-colour Mitsubishi Diamond Tandem Perfector succeed an eight-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster. The 10-colour perfecting press is a KBA Rapida 105.
All investment decisions are made on the basis of increasing efficiency and reducing costs. With the one-for-two purchase of the Komori web the savings come from reduced manning requirements and increasing productivity and capacity. The path to the Mitsubishi was more complex. Underdown explains: “We were looking for some new announcements from the perfecting market and Mitsubishi were the only ones coming up with anything new in the form of the Tandem Perfector. It has the advantage that the sheet is not turned, so there is no risk of marking and because there is only one gripper edge we can save 20-25mm on every sheet of paper. It is not significant in isolation, but over 100,000 sheets is quite a big saving.” In the UK, there was only the showroom press in Leeds and a press in Scotland, meaning that to see a TP in operation Ancient House press had to go overseas, coming back from Japan with glowing reports about both press and manufacturer. These reports and the spreadsheets to demonstrate the savings were presented to the board. Many might consider the purchase of such a different press as the Mitsubishi to be a risk. For Underdown the greater risk would have been not to buy it.
“In the competitive environment we are in, any advantage we can gain in terms of selling ourselves has to be good for business,” he says. “That was the main reason we looked at Mitsubishi in the first place.”
Berry confirms this saying: “It was about the commercial reality of the investment that had to stand up. There was the flexibility of being able to put a wide range of stocks through at commercial running speeds which makes it more flexible than a standard configuration perfector.”
On coming to Ipswich Peter Underdown had brought with him contacts with London customers, many in retail, and scratch cards were a staple product for a good number of years. Now the customer base is spread across a number of sectors. There is government work, retail (inserts and mail order in particular), tourism and publishers. Ancient House Press also works for some print management companies, recognising the reality of today’s market. “You simply cannot ignore them,” says Berry. “We work with some of the larger ones for if you don’t understand the way they work and the direction they are going in, you are being very blinkered. They have had a major impact in where the work is coming from in the industry.”
The range of customers provides protection when one market dips, there being no one dominant customer Underdown points out. The magazine or direct mail sectors have never appealed. “We want absolute flexibility,” says Berry. “We have never been a printer wanting to keeping producing the same type of product with the same format. We want to produce a wide range of products within a fast turnaround time and we don’t want presses locked up for weeks and months ahead so that we can’t accommodate a client who needs his job urgently.
“We want to be able to react to these demands when they are made.”
This was a key factor in deciding on both the web and sheetfed press. It is also a key factor in implementing a JDF network around the plant. Jobs are opened in the Solprint MIS, currently undergoing a major revamp, and fed to the Agfa ApogeeX prepress workflow, for output on a 40 plates per hour Avantra. This single machine replaced two older platesetters with a more automated line reducing the headcount needed in the process. The JDF data is then fed as CIP3 files to the presses and to the bindery. The two Muller Martini Prima stitching lines have Amrys set up on them. This also reduces the manpower required because a skilled hand can set the line while the less experienced operators will keep it running. “Everything we do in terms of investment, we look at what it does for the business in terms of labour saving,” Underdown explains. Both managing directors know that to stand still is not an option. Jarrold & Sons, once the largest printer in East Anglia, was not far away and one reason for its collapse was that it had not changed.
There is no risk of this happening to the Ipswich company. Procedures are under constant review and alterations are made. In the highly price-sensitive commercial sector it would be foolhardy not to do this. Indeed Ancient House Press seems a model of the lean manufacturing ideas that are promoted by the likes of Vision in Print. It’s a surprise then when Underdown says that the organisation had not been involved. “We did it ourselves,” he says for his sister to add: “Just looking at the balance sheet was enough persuasion.”
As an example they point to the web press area. With two miniwebs in operation there were four operators per press over three shifts; with the 16pp press manning is two and a half heads per shift and output is up 33%. “We are doing things that five years ago we wouldn’t have believe would have been possible,” Berry adds. “It’s all about being as efficient as we can be.”
It’s not about reducing manpower hand by hand. The company has three trainees in the printing area and is looking at recruiting youngsters for the bindery. “We know that we can’t rely on technology alone, we know we need to train for the future,” she says.
If the internal operation is now largely complete, or will be once a perfect binding line is installed next year, the focus is shifting to the systems to make it all work together and to the interface with customers. The investment in the MIS and networking continues. Already a scheduling package is flexible enough to cope with a production plan which might at 4pm be completely different to that set in a production meeting at 9am the same day.
There has always been an emphasis on sales, one of the reasons for the company’s growth. Both joint managing directors will look after a number of clients themselves, as much as a way of keeping close to changes in market demands as supporting customer loyalty. Internal teams of customer service personnel will be assigned to particular clients, again for continuity and to retain the human touch. But technology is coming here too, with file submission and remote proofing on their way. An Agfa Delano system, popular with magazine printers, is under serious consideration. “At times I wish there was a bit more direct customer contact,” Berry says. “It’s all about electronic communication so at times the sales people don’t get in front of a client as frequently as they should. But that’s about the change that you have to embrace and ensure that your systems can cope with whatever way clients want to work.”
Any job that comes in is costed immediately and by and large this will determine whether it is to be printed on the web or sheetfed presses. But it is not a hard and fast rule. The productivity of the Mitsubishi means that it can leave 26,000 B1 impressions on the floor an hour, while the Komori’s fast set-up time means that it is competitive at a run of 10,000 sheets. Flexibility is further helped by complete compatibility of paper. The Mabeg sheeter fitted to the Mitsubishi, to make it the longest commercial sheetfed press in the country, takes the same 870mm reels as the Komori. Discerning any difference in quality between the two is almost impossible says Underdown. “Sometimes the decision on which piece of kit we use comes down to where there is capacity available.”
Next year sees the introduction of perfect binding and acquisition of a further 15,000sq ft of space to house it, and as a work in progress store. Then comes the question of whether the next major purchase will be a further Mitsubishi or a second 16pp web press. At the same time the company is keeping an eye on developments in digital printing. The company is not interested in personalised direct mail printing, nor does Underdown consider Ipswich to have enough demand for fast turnaround short run digital print to support an investment of this type. “We would never say never,” says Berry. “It’s something that we look at and contemplate.”
With the introduction of the new binder, inhouse flexibility gains another notch. It will help with clients like Boden, for whom Ancient House Press has been a regular supplier ever since its early days when Alison Berry walked along a row of run down houses in North Acton looking for this new business and wondering whether it was going to be possible to get the necessary credit insurance. That wasn’t a problem and as Boden has expanded, the company has continued to print for it. “Boden is a company that likes to keep it fresh: they are talking to new people all the time and have grown because of it. They will take the catalogue and create smaller versions with different covers that they are sending out at different times,” says Berry. “This is what we try to do as well. We will never be complacent.”