Five-Colour Press Changes 4 Plates In 150 Seconds

Not many companies can claim to have installed five Komori presses in seven years but Walsh Colour Print has just added a new five-colour Lithrone S29 B2 press with coater to its press line-up.

Not many companies can claim to have installed five Komori presses in seven years but Walsh Colour Print has just added a new five-colour Lithrone S29 B2 press with coater to its press line-up.

Its complement of presses comprises a B1 eight-colour Lithrone LS840 Perfector, a 10-colour B2 NL1028 Perfector and two four-colour Lithrone 426s.

The company has brought coating in-house for the first time with its new Komori Lithrone S 529.

The Lithrone 29, launched at Ipex 2006, features what Komori claimed to be the highest level of automation it has offered to the B2 market, including a new, fully-automatic, plate changing system as standard.

The press's ability to change four plates in 150 seconds and achieve a high-speed, six minute change-over from one job to the next with automatic ink key setting via on-press CIP4 data evaluation, allows Walsh Colour to handle even the shortest run lengths very competitively, added Komori.

Tony Walsh, managing director of Walsh Colour, said: "It's a very simple formula really.

We are very proactive and are continually asking our clients what they need from a trade service and we ensure we deliver it in terms of quality, price and deadlines.

The choice of press is absolutely critical." And he added: "In order to be highly competitive we have to be able to increase our capacity and productivity but not our costs.

Komori's perfecting performance, ease of operation, slick make-ready capabilities and streamlined automation is very important to ensure we can achieve this goal." Walsh explained that the investment is a perfect example of how the company is maximising the capabilities of Komori technology.

Komori UK managing director, Neil Sutton, said: "Walsh Colour really does make the most of our automation features in every sense and it shows in its continuing success." The 70-strong Walsh Colour factory is in full production 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week handling run lengths from 200-500,000.

As Tony Walsh pointed out: "To achieve our targets we have to keep our presses fully occupied as much as we can and Komori's reliability is fantastic.

The presses just don't break down.

Everything is geared to printing and finishing quickly, hence the focus on perfecting presses and the ability to seal and coat to ensure fast drying and quality results." He explained that he is already looking to future expansion: "We have room for five or six more presses here, which gives us great potential going forward." Walsh Colour, of Castleisland, County Kerry (Eire) provides a trade service to printers throughout Ireland and the UK, whilst maintaining growth over the past nine years, according to Komori UK.

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