Craddocks sells litho press to fund finishing investment

Commercial printer Craddocks Print Solutions has sold a Komori press to finance the purchase of a DC645 finishing system from equipment supplier Duplo.

The Godalming-based company finalised the purchase of the machine at this year's London Calling event at the Tate Modern in London last week (7 October). It expects the stitcher/cutter/folder to be installed in the next couple of weeks.

According to managing director Richard Hackett, the investment will enable Craddocks to keep more work in-house and offer a quicker turnaround time, crucial for digital printing.

The company moved into digital printing around five years ago, complementing its litho printing services.

However, Hackett said that Craddocks has spent the last few years converting its customers into digital.

He explained: "We have been educating our customers about the advantages of digital, you have to change their mindset. Instead of doing run lengths of 5,000 we said why not take 500 now and when you need 500 more we can send them over. It saves them storage space and makes much more sense.

"We got to a point a year ago where we were barely using our Komori, it was a 1986 version so it needed an upgrade. We decided to buy a Xerox 700 instead and sold the Komori to a dealer, with that money we were able to invest in the new Duplo."

The £200,000 company has four staff and Hackett admitted that its turnover was down slightly on when it was running litho work, but said that it expected an increase in future years.

He said: "It is a lot of £100 jobs rather than one £1,000 job, but it will increase. In my mind a small company like ours just can't afford to run litho, it has to be digital. Sure the big boys can afford to do both, but a business of our size really has to be offering digital services and concentrating on that."

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