Griffin Press has just pushed the start button on its new multi-million dollar high speed inline end to end digital book printing line, in so doing becoming hailed as the most advanced book printing company in the world.
The new line takes a reel of paper at one end, then without stopping prints, binds and adds the covers, producing shelf ready books in whatever size is specified. Reel of paper in one end, finished book with covers out the other.
The digital press is the high speed HP T410 monochrome digital inkjet printer, with a Kolbus binding line inline on the back end. Covers are fed into the Kolbus and wrapped around the blocks. The HP T410 prints, the paper is fed straight into the Kolbus, which cuts, gathers, stitches, trims, adds the covers and delivers. Kolbus had to adapt the finishing line by around 10 per cent to integrate directly with the HP, but almost all its installations require some kind of application engineering, so there was nothing particularly new or difficult there.
Covers had been a stumbling block to an end to end production ability, however Griffin has installed a whole new cover printing department, with an HP Indigo 10000 B2 and an HP Indigo 7800 B3 press, along with a Scodix Ultra Foil Pro embellishment system, enabling the covers to be printed and finished on site, and then fed straight into the Kolbus.
In the few weeks since the cover printing solution was installed Griffin is already printing more sheets on the B12 Indigo 10000 than any other printer in the world. Griffin is looking to produce some 45,000 books per day, 16 million books a year, on the digital end to end line.
Ben Jolly, general manager at Griffin says, “It is not every day that an investment of this scope and size takes place, but Griffin and PMP have now built a foundation with which to serve publishers. They want shorter runs, they want quick delivery, and they want to eliminate inventory, so they can free up working capital and eliminate waste. Griffin Press is now able to meet all these requirements.”
The installation of the digital production equipment has been handled by HP, Kolbus and Currie Group, who represent HP Indigo and Scodix in Australia. Describing the launch event as ‘a monumental day’ Rob Dunnett, CEO at Currie Group says, “Griffin is showing the world how to implement and integrate digital technology to produce outcomes the market is demanding.”
In the cover production suite the two HP Indigos have been working hard since installation, according to Rob Dunnett, CEO of supplier Currie Group, they are performing at the highest levels, he says, “The Griffin HP Indigo 10000 B2 is already the most productive in the world.”Griffin produces four up covers on the Indigo 10000 and two up on the Indigo 7800. Embellishment is on the Scodix Ultra Pro Foil in the same room, with embossing and foiling. The covers are also laminated here, before being taken to the Kolbus.
The digital printing set-up at Griffin means the company can also now produce pre-sales mock-ups for its covers, covers that will be exactly how the actual covers will look.
Ben Jolly says, “There has been a significant change in market demand, with publishers wanting a change in inventory policy and showing less appetite for risk. Digital printing enable us to more than meet those changed market demands, changes that are happening at an increasing rate. We now have everything in house, and with the inline bindery and digital inhouse covers we are not waiting, and importantly neither our are customers.”
Leon Andrewartha, executive general manager at Griffin says, “The new investment here gives us an agility and flexibility that is unparalleled in book printing.”
The digital set-up with the inline book manufacturing facilitated by inhouse on demand cover printing not only provide immense benefits to publishers in the elimination of inventory and therefore better cash flow and less risk, as we ll as short run and quick turnaround, it will also mean a significant amount of book printing that is currently accomplished overseas may come back to these shores.
Peter George, CEO of Griffin’s parent PMP, says that the new digital era will keep more book printing in Australia, as overseas printers will not be able to compete on time, and for much short run work it will not be cost effective to ship books here. The rationale is that as publishers will no longer need to keep inventory the appeal of having books printed in China and shipped over diminishes, especially when combined with the need for short run work. If the publisher can phone Griffin and request and extra 500 copies by the end of the week why would they go to China. George says, “Publishers want to reduce time to market, and they want to reduce inventory levels. The old model of printing books offshore and storing them is rendered ineffective now they can be printed so quickly here.”
George is also confident that the oft mooted end of Parrallel Import Restrictions will not impact on its Griffin business, evidenced by its committment to investing several million dollars a year for the next seven years with HP in a lease deal for the presses while ceasing PIR remains on the table .
George says, “When we analysed the situation at Griffin we knew what was required. We then sent our COO John Nichols to scour the world, looking at book printers and how they were doing things. No-one in fact was doing what we wanted to do, but talking with HP it became clear that they could, in partnership with Kolbus come up with a solution, and in fact that is what they have done.”
Kai Buentemeyer, managing partner in Kolbus says, “Griffin Press is now the world’s most advanced book printing plant, no-one else has had the vision or the courage to go for such an installation from reel to book in one pass, which is clearly the way forward.”
Griffin Press is one of the oldest companies in South Australia, and in fact in the whole country, it began life as Adland in 1858 printing the Advertiser Newspaper. These days of course it is part of PMP, the biggest print and distribution group in Australia, with its core activity pleasure books, which it can produce now in runs of anything from one to one million, and in the words of Peter George ‘Book printers around the world will be taking note of what we have achieved here’.
For HP the investment by Griffin is vindication of its strategy. HP is ploughing hundreds of millions of dollars into developing new digital print technology, with the different platforms designed to meet the demands that its market trends strategists perceive. On demand and digital book printing, with reel to book technology is a key application.
HP is now one of the biggest players in commercial print, it had the biggest stand at drupa taking out the whole of a hall, with some 53 different presses on display for a range of applications.
Steve Donegal, regional manager at HP says, “At HP we are seeking partners who can optimise the opportunities that new technology brings, Griffin is doing just that.
“Partnerships like HP and Griffin are changing the future, we are providing the business models that are not based on the past but on what the world looks like now and how it is moving. There are clear drivers in this, economic forces, the instant society, smart business practices. We are delivering end to end capability, producing product in the shortest amount of time with the fewest people.” Donegal predicts that the future may include a marriage between printed books and the ubiquitous smartphone, where the phone scans the page and augmented reality is realised.
He also says, “The new technology at Griffin not only enables Griffin to offer publishers enormous benefits in short run printing, elimination of inventory and risk, and time to market, it also opens up new markets for them. Books now are never out of print, if a publisher wants a single copy of a book that was printed half a century ago provided they have the files it can be produced.” All of us are living through history and change. Peter George says that the entry of Amazon into the book market ‘changed everything in books’ and led to local publishers demanding rapid print and short runs. He says, “Printed books are clearly here to stay. Kindle has plateaued. The book market has changed though, and so has Griffin with this new production system. Our aim is to provide publishers with the means to meet the demands of consumers, and there is no doubt this new technology will enable the company to do just that.”
There is no doubt that today the future for Griffin Press is looking substantially better than it did a few years ago, thanks to senior management within the group having the ability to read the market, understand the real needs of their customers, not be shackled by old approaches, and have the courage of their convictions to put their money where their mouth is and spend big on new technology to re-invent the business model.
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