Tirupur’s Saravana Graphicss opts for Heidelberg Speedmaster SX 74

Established in 2007 by brothers Saravanan and Satish P, the company produces a wide range of garment labels, tags, photo cards, and boxes, catering to export and import market with a 60:40 ratio.

“We are excited with the investment we have made in the best-of-its-class SX 74 and are eagerly looking forward to reap the benefits from its capability,” said Saravanan, managing director of Saravana Graphics.

The four-colour 15,000sph Speedmaster SX 74 features Heidelberg’s Intellistart, which Saravanan believes will ensure faster job changes. “The preparation for the next job can be well and truly taken care even while the current one is still running on the press.”

Intellistart is said to compare the current press status with parameters for the new job to generate steps required to change jobs intelligently and dynamically, based on the comparison. It also provides schedulable setup times and constant time savings with each job change, by reducing 70% of the operating steps to be carried out on the control station by the press operator.

The company, which has seen a healthy growth of about 15% year-on-year, has a plethora of equipment including six single-colour presses from Shinohara, ten digital presses, six die-cutting machines, and two paper cutting machines.

 (l) Saravanan and Satish (r) with their father (c)

The other feature that adds to higher productivity and lesser wastage, according to Saravanan, is the ColorFast software. “Its ability to speed up the inking unit’s response by 50% to 70% is a boon to our printing needs,” he said.

“Considering the fact that we print on an average of 1.5 lakh sheets per day and produce about 6-7 lakhs printed products, the need to have a press that keeps up with the increasing demand became imperative for us,” explained Saravanan.

Designed to be eco-friendly, the SX 74 is equipped with special rollers in the Alcolor dampening system to reduce alcohol usage from 10% to 3%, saving 172 litres of alcohol for every 10-million printed sheets. 

Talking about the decision to invest in the SX 74, Saravanan said, “Apart from several technical advantages, the fact that it has the manufacturer dealing with the end-to-end of the deal, including service requirements in the future, tilted the balance in Heidelberg’s favour.“In fact, we are seriously considering further investments in the future and Heidelberg will be our first choice,” he concluded.