Cromwell brought to book

Switching to Fuji violet technology has brought productivity gains and energy savings at a Wiltshire book printer

Specialist printer and bookbinder Cromwell Press provides short-to-medium runs of both paperback and cased books for over two hundred academic, legal, religious and technical publishers. Following several years of investment in machinery and premises, the prepress studio was this year modified to take advantage of the reduced environmental impact and lower cost of ownership of Fuji's violet CTP technology. Director Allan Hicks explains, "Our systems needed updating and so we looked at a number of suppliers. Fujifilm was able to offer a complete solution.

"At any one time, we can have 2000 books in varying stages of production passing through the factory. We start about 20 new titles a day and each page of a title is treated like a new job - so we can have about three-quarters of a million jobs in progress. We're outputting on average over 4500 B1 plates and over 1000 B2 plates a month."

With four B1 presses and one B2 unit at the company's Trowbridge site to keep fed, rapid plate throughput was clearly a critical requirement. To keep up with the workload, Cromwell Press chose two fully automatic dual-laser Luxel Vx-9600 CTP violet B1 platesetters. Hicks comments: "We looked at Fuji's violet CTP solution and examined how our energy consumption would be affected. Compared to thermal solutions, the power consumption of the violet platesetters is minimal; this was very important to us, as we want to be as environmentally friendly as we can. The Fuji machines also use less chemistry."

Origination manager John Harvey comments, "With such a complicated installation, Fuji has been brilliant. Together with Fuji, we came up with a staggered plan of installing the equipment so that we could train our staff in stages. For several months we had our old system and the new Fuji one working in tandem."

Cromwell Press has noticed a significant difference in production since installing the Fuji equipment. Allan Hicks explains, "As we were using high output machines before, platesetter speed alone wasn't really an issue for us, but what we have realised is that the combination of the Fuji platesetters and workflow has brought a big increase in productivity."

All of Cromwell's work is output on Fuji's violet Brillia LP-NV violet plates. Hicks notes, "I don't think I've ever switched plate supplier and heard nothing except good things about the plate, but this is what has happened here."

Harvey adds: "We'd never used Fuji before but have been really impressed with their service and the high quality of the products."