Clays Limited, the UK's largest book manufacturer, has ordered a manroland Goss LITHOMAN IV letterpress press for its plant in Bungay, Suffolk.
The new press is a Coldset LITHOMAN with DynaChange Zero Makeready capability.
The press can produce around 50 million books a year.
Clays produces more than 150 million books a year at its site in Bungay, Suffolk. This project is the next and largest step to date in an ongoing multi-million pound investment programme that has been accelerated since Elcograf acquired the business in 2018 and includes lithographic and digital presses, both black and white and colour, as well as related binding and finishing equipment. The combined investments will deliver transformative capacity changes and secure Clays' ability to offer letterpress publishers further improvements in supply chain speed and availability.
The new press will provide significant additional capacity for B-format books while absorbing some of the volume previously produced digitally, freeing up digital capacity for growing volumes at very short run lengths. The press, with a web width of 1260mm and a cylinder circumference of 1105mm, will produce 48-page sections of 2up book signatures at up to 37,000pph and can change jobs on the fly at full speed.
The press will feature the latest DynaChange functionality, enabling non-stop production and a significant reduction in waste. The two-unit press automatically changes plates on the non-printing unit, which ramps up at full press speed and changes plates on the fly. Shorter runs can be produced at lower press speeds to allow time for press unit shutdown, automatic blanket washing, automatic plate changing, pre-inking and automatic press unit start-up.
Product quality is controlled by a variety of inline control loops, including manroland Goss' inline density control (IDCm) and inline cut-off control (ICCD).
Paul Hulley, CEO of Clays, said: "This investment demonstrates our strong confidence in and long-term commitment to the UK book market. In recent years we have invested primarily in digital technology in response to market changes. Given the advances in technology, we are now focusing on upgrading our commercial press, which continues to produce the majority of our volume. We are making an unprecedented series of investments in printing and binding; this is indeed a very exciting time for our company.
Edourdo Cuomo, Deputy CEO and CEO-designate of Clays, said, "We are very excited about this transformative investment, which represents a leap in capacity and positions Clays as a leading supplier for the foreseeable future, alongside other major investments already made. From the outset of this project we have been very impressed with what we can achieve by investing in commercial technology. The fact that this
manroland Goss press can produce 50 million books per year underpins our existing service commitments and puts strong additional capacity behind our growth ambitions.
Ian Smith, Clays Operations Director, said: "From the outset we have been pleased to work with manroland Goss. Thanks to the extensive experience and technical expertise of the manroland Goss and Clays teams, we can be confident that we will successfully complete this major installation. We are commissioning our latest binding line now, in time for a busy autumn, and look forward to working with manroland Goss over the coming months to bring this fantastic investment to life, with the press arriving in summer 2022.
Sixten Zapf, deputy sales manager manroland Goss web systems GmbH, said: "We have used all our experience in coldset technology to develop this press together with Clays. Clays and manroland Goss have developed a great partnership that began back in 2018 when Clays acquired manroland Goss' FormerLine digital book block finishing system."
John Ellis, manroland Goss web systems UK Managing Director, said:
"We are delighted to be supporting Clays in this next exciting phase of development. We have analysed Clays' production requirements in detail and then carried out extensive testing. We have also agreed a five-year service level agreement to support Clays and ensure that the highest levels of performance are maintained.