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A1 Security Print has just completed a major upgrade to one of its main web presses, increasing the number of units from 4 to 6. This significant investment in their Muller Martini Grapha delivers much greater flexibility to the security printing business, with the improved machine now matching the configuration of their other large press, an Imer 120BF. This provides excellent contingency and doubles capacity for those larger than usual orders.

It took a week and a half to integrate the two new units into the existing press, and everything was completed exactly on schedule, allowing the busy pressroom to get straight back to production with improved capacity. The upgrade also included 2 new UV lamps on the new towers to maintain the interdeck UV drying system on the original press.  Production Manager Ian Woodhouse said “Any time we can avoid going through the press more than we have to, allows us to reduce costs and increase capacity”.

Account Manager Derrick Taylor was equally enthused, stating that the upgrade makes A1 more competitive for many types of work. “The nature of our industry means that we print numerous specialist inks for high end security print work on top of the standard print colours, so we often have to put jobs through the press at least twice. We recently printed a job containing 17 colours, which would have required 5 passes on the Grapha – we could now run this job in just three passes on the upgraded press, reducing costs, waste and lead times. For some of the larger jobs we produce in the millions, we can now run them across two presses at the same time, reducing turnaround time considerably”.