Environmentally-Conscious Approach for Basingstoke Printer

Offering an environmentally-conscious approach to printing is one of the cornerstones Greenhouse Graphics has built its business on. And it is what led the company to invest in finishing systems from Graphic Arts Equipment.

The Basingstoke short-run magazine specialist is guided by its own EcoPrint-System4, which is a series of environmental initiatives covering issues such as VOC emissions, energy usage, chemical usage, recycling and waste reduction.

To meet its own green code it installed a Horizon VAC-Turbo PowerCollator with SPF-200A which includes two 10 station tower collators that can collate 10,000 sets/hr and 4,000 books/hr and a FC200A fore-edge heavy-duty inline stitch/fold and trimmer.

Clients include local community magazines, football clubs and charities such as St John’s Ambulance. Managing Director Ian Crossley explained:

“A lot of the magazines we print do like the eco-friendly aspect of our business. When we look for equipment we assess its impact and how it will help us conform to our internal standards. We compared eco friendliness, speed of jobs, set-up and wastage. We also took into account energy usage and GAE’s equipment was the best choice.

“We have a lot of short-run magazine work so we need to be able to change jobs quickly. It is also good to be able to take work off halfway through a run, put another job on and then go back to finishing off the first job. The greater flexibility is one of the strengths of the machine.

“We tend to do runs of 1,000 to 5,000 and the speed of the machine has essentially doubled throughput. In the past where we would have had overtime, this has meant it is not needed. We can also take more jobs on that we would have had to say no to before. We are really very pleased.”

As for choosing GAE, Mr Crossley said: “We looked at other machines but at the end of the day we felt the GAE equipment was more robust and that tipped the balance. We needed to feel that it was going to last.”