“This is India’s first Heidelberg Anicolor plus coater press, which is capable of running 15,000 impressions per hour,” said L Ramanathan, managing director of Sree Vinayaga Screens.

 

Established in 1978, the company, which started as a screen print and letterpress firm, now stands tall as a full-fledged commercial offset print house with a fleet of presses including a four-colour Mitsubishi G-series and a Komori Lithrone 29.

 

“Our major strength is the quality of press machinery at our facility which is continuously maintained and calibrated. As a company, we’d like to call ourselves a small replica of a huge print shop as we have all the necessary facilities to produce a job in-house including CTP systems and an array of finishing equipment,” added Ramanathan.

 

The Anicolor press prints jobs from 200 to 5,000 sheets, with an average run of 1,000. It processes substrates from 0.03 to 0.6 millimetres (0.0012 to 0.024 inches). Elaborating on their reason to procure this press, Ramanathan, who is a print technologist by education, said, “Frankly, we have used all brands except Heidelberg, so initially, we thought of going with a regular SM52 for short-run jobs, but when we saw this machine at the open house in Mangalore we were fascinated with the new technology and that was when we decided to go with Anicolor and we are confident that we made the right choice.”

 

According to Heidelberg, compared to a press with conventional inking unit, the benefits of Anicolor can be summed up as "90:50:50" which means that Anicolor inking unit technology results in 90 percent less paper waste, 50 percent shorter makeready times, and 50 percent higher productivity.

 

Speaking about the installation, Ganesh Kumar of Heidelberg said, “With a shorter make-ready time, print buyers can walk-in with their jobs and get it printed within a short span of time (A-4 or A-3 sheets, in 10 -15 mins max) and pricing is very competitive with digital too.”

 

As a commercial printer with a good share of walk-ins, Ramanathan feels Anicolor helps them compete with the digital print shops.

 

“The main USP of Anicolor I would say is the minimal make-ready time- one time a customer came to our print shop at closing time with an urgent requirement for a wedding event. I offered them coffee and by the time we were done, the job of 500 sheets was printed and delivered to them instantly,” explained Ramanathan. “ The online coating unit is a lucrative feature too, enabling jobs like POS posters, danglers, flyers can be delivered in shorter time to our customers,” he added.

 

The company’s clientele include top advertising agencies in South Tamil Nadu, corporates like Aurolab, Titan, Bajaj, BigBazar, Ola Cabs etc and also a sizeable share of walk-ins.