The changing world of finishing
PETER MORRIS, IN MORE THAN 40 YEARS’ experience of the industry, has never seen market conditions like these. Friedheim International, the company he heads as managing director, can track its history back 125 years and it is safe to say that in that time nobody in the company has endured the mix of economic climate and rapid technological change that is taking place today.
Ten years ago the business moved from its historical home on Waterloo Road in central London to Hemel Hempstead in the Home Counties, changed its name from Oscar Friedheim to Friedheim International and had enjoyed year on year growth. At the start of that decade it had parted company with Bobst, which had started a directly owned operation in the UK, but has continued to enjoy strong relationships with the others it represents. However, this year, times for the industry have changed and Friedheim – like other distribution companies – is suffering. “It’s a reflection of what is going on in the whole business,” says Morris; not that this shared experience makes life any easier.
Friedheim’s speciality has long been in the supply of finishing equipment. There are no presses, nor are there prepress products to market and support. Instead, the two major principles are German folder manufacturer MBO and Swiss paper handling specialist Hunkeler. The latter has prime position every time a web-fed digital press is sold as most will recommend Hunkeler’s unwind, paper processing and delivery systems. MBO vies with Heidelberg in the folder market. Around these companies come the likes of Senator guillotines, Tauler laminating machines, Rotek pile turners, Technau perforating equipment and Palamides wrapping units among others.
It constitutes a spread of equipment that keeps business going even as the industry undergoes traumatic change.
“I think the whole graphic arts business that we know and love has changed forever. I don’t think we will ever return to the level of installations that have happened over the last couple of decades,” he says. Those were the years when Friedheim might sell 100 MBO folders in a year. “We will never go back to that or anywhere near it,” he adds.
The market is suffering not only from a recessionary change, but also from a seismic shift in the way that the print business operates. It means change for Friedheim as well, more than just absorbing additional agencies that other distributors can no longer handle. It means going out and seeking new styles of equipment. Morris is keenly aware of this. “We know we have to replace the reduced MBO and Hunkeler business going forward as we can no longer expect to sell this number of folders a year or that number of roll feeds.
“We need to become all things to all people and we have to look at other opportunities so that we can go to customers and, provided it is about finishing, supply something the customer needs.”
Those needs are changing rapidly. Morris spends a lot of time sounding out printers about the directions their businesses are taking and the pressures they are under. All report reducing print runs, shrinking margins, increasing importance of digital printing and the need to reduce manpower. He explains: “If a company’s average run was 20,000, it is now 10,000 and is going to come down further; if the average was 10,000, it is now 5,000. This does not mean that printers rush out to buy digital presses. What they need is highly automated equipment where make ready is more important than running speed. If you are only producing 1,000 on a machine that runs at 10,000 an hour, there’s no advantage in running at 15,000 an hour. But when you can make ready in five minutes when previously it took 30 minutes, that is how you survive as a company.”
There are conversations with companies about how to shrink a line-up of six folders to two highly automated machines, about how to reduce steps in the manufacturing process through handling systems. But despite this there remains a lingering reluctance to invest in finishing automation, and perceived costs of doing so are out of kilter with reality.
“A printer will have automated prepress, will have spent £2 million on a new perfecting press and will expect to finish what is now a very expensive sheet of paper on a 40 year old guillotine and equally ancient folder. And then they are shocked that a new folder will cost them £150,000 when they still think it is £20,000. In 40 years of talking to people I have never understood that attitude.
“You can still go to places and see someone lift paper to move it to another device only 3 metres away. There are those that refuse to invest in a stack lift because that would make the operator’s job easier and he would not longer be earning his wages.”
These are the B1 or B2 commercial printers, he says, that find themselves competing on price alone and who inevitably find themselves losing jobs to the printer that has negotiated a better paper or consumables deal. There is no consideration of true business costs, no analysis of where the bottlenecks in a business are. As an example he points to the pile turner, which should be used on every stack going to the press, not just those that have been printed on one side. “This action aerates the stack, removes dust and ensures that the paper feeds so much better on the press. A £20,000 investment will be repaid very quickly.”
On the folders pallet feed has become more popular as a means of reducing manning levels and coping with shorter runs. Continuous feed is preferred for longer runs because there is no need to stop the folder for five minutes to switch from one pallet to the next. One operator can keep the machine loaded at one end while a Palamides wrapper will handle multiple streams of products coming out of the folder. To objections that it is impossible for a machine to distinguish between different products being delivered, Morris suggests using different coloured wraps. “We saw a machine in Germany where a single operator was easily able to keep pace with a folder delivering 40,000 of four different railway timetables an hour. The Palamides Delta is a fantastic piece of equipment, it’s the best innovation for the bindery for many years.”
Morris is on constant look out now for the next life-changing innovation. He has no appetite for Japanese or Chinese equipment, pointing out that Chinese manufacturers are copying machines that European companies developed years ago. Instead the search concentrates on Europe and in particular on Italy. Here specialist engineering companies are smaller and quicker on their feet than their German counterparts. “Our challenge is to find equipment that suits the run lengths the industry is facing, whether in books, direct mail, magazines, brochures and so on. This means very short make ready and not having the fastest running speeds. There will be some companies that want something that runs at 20,000 an hour, but there will be fewer and fewer of them.
“I’m going to see a company in Italy that has developed systems for very short runs of soft cover books, even individually printed books,” Morris says. “This will take in digitally printed reels of paper and produce eight-page sections; and in the same device can deliver glued sections, stitched sections or sections gathered ready for a sewer.
“There’s a binder that can switch in three minutes from hot-melt glue for cased in books to PUR for perfect bound products. Another is using a cover feeder to feed end papers as well so that the printer has one flexible piece of equipment rather than two dedicated machines.
“When print runs are long and there are specialist binderies, it is not in the interests of manufacturers to develop these types of flexible machine. This is why it is the smaller more innovative manufacturers that are coming up with the technology for short runs. The larger companies are apt to downgrade an existing machine that used to do 100 a minute to give something that produces 20 a minute and say it is a short run machine, but it retains the old mentality.
“The smaller engineering companies we are now looking at are prepared to produce customer-built systems. The world is changing.”
This is not going to take Friedheim into offering all sorts of tabletop finishing equipment. It will remain focused on true industrial grade equipment that is designed for quality production day after day, not spasmodic production once or twice a week.
It will mean helping customers to specify what they need on one hand and will mean encouraging the likes of MBO to consider a folder not as a standalone device, but as part of an integrated production system. “All the book printers who perhaps once looked down on digital production now have a digital print business as well as litho. This is the type of solution they are looking for.”