McAllister Litho switches to Komori with two Lithrone GL40s

Print Solutions

McAllister Litho has ordered its first Komori presses in a £3 million investment which also includes pre-press equipment and a substantial MIS upgrade.

A five colour B1 Lithrone GL540 will be installed in June 2016, followed in August by an eight colour B1 Lithrone GL840 Perfector with reel sheeter.

Operations director Brian McAllister said, ‘We are replacing two Heidelberg B1 presses which were several years old, because we needed to ensure that our key presses provided us with round the clock reliability and the productivity benefits of the latest offset technologies. We checked out the latest offerings from the three major press manufacturers and the Komori package was clearly the best option to fit the business.’

He continued, ‘The unit specification of the Lithrones is similar to the existing presses; other than that the Komori perfector is a four-over-four, whereas the SM102 was a five-over-five, simply because we have found that the latest range of vegetable based inks we use dry effectively without the need for sealing.

‘As with the current press, the Komori perfector has a reel sheeter, but this time it is a Mabeg RS106 and so we will remain the only sheetfed offset printer in Scotland to run a reel to sheet device. On the

longer runs we handle, we have found accountable savings in paper cost and waste through cutting the web in line to the precise sheet size required. It helps towards our competitiveness and it’s also good environmentally. Many customers insist that their print suppliers adopt all possible eco standards and the environmental benefits of the Komori GL machines helped us to move towards the Lithrones – which we know we can run alcohol free from day one and incorporate many time and material saving systems.’

Managing director Janette McAllister added, ‘We are unusual in the commercial print industry in that we are one of the few companies that still produces larger print runs, it is not unusual for us to run half a million plus sheets per make ready. We’re building for more business from existing customers and from new clients across the UK.

‘We are confident that this will lead to an increase in our workforce across all departments including apprentices. To accommodate the extra productivity of the Komori presses, we are also installing two new Screen platesetters along with new processors and considerably upgrading our Tharstern MIS to cover all aspects of management including estimating, scheduling, order programming and processing.’