Marshall & Bruce Co. will soon celebrate their 150th anniversary, a tremendous achievement for the Nashville commercial, packaging and P-O-P printer. Throughout the years they've survived a devastating fire, a thousand year flood and the Depression, proving there are worse things than downtime when equipment fails. When confronted with those type of situations one learns to adapt, which led management to turn to Colter & Peterson for a reconditioned 71" Wohlenberg paper cutter and a rebuilt POLAR jogging unit.
"Until we installed our 57" KBA press in September 2013, we were a 40" shop for a very long time," recalled Chip Smith, who went to work at Marshall & Bruce Co. in 1984 and has served as President of the 50+ employee company for the last 15 years.
"I spoke with our KBA representative since we were in the market for a large format cutter and he recommended C&P. With our business growing, we needed equipment that was faster and more efficient. We were looking at a smaller cutter but Bruce Peterson explained how we could improve our efficiency with a cutter the size of the Wohlenberg."
Marshall & Bruce Co. knows about efficiency. They opened for business in 1865 as a book bindery and added a small printing office four years later. The business flourished until 1895 when a fire destroyed everything, but seven months later they completed rebuilding on the same site. Company leaders continued to flash their moxie in beating the Depression and surviving through lean World War II years. The great flood that swamped the Music City in 2010 was no match for the company's employees; they filled customer orders while clean-up and repair was taking place after the presses and other equipment had sustained water damage.
The Wohlenberg cutter and jogger joined a 61" POLAR in April to handle the workload. It sports cutting edge Microcut® technology, including a programmable 12" touch screen, and the jogger makes for simpler operation with a built-in air table. Smith refers to the Wohlenberg as his "go-to" machine.
"Both are workhorses but the Wohlenberg has been a tremendous help. It's only been a couple of months so it's a bit early to tell exactly how efficient it will be, but the cutter is doing exactly what we expected it to do."
Smith said his company has established a reputation for tackling the tough jobs. That's where the larger size of the Wohlenberg cutter and jogging machine make a difference, especially since the facility operates 24/5 and the paper cutters see action for two of the daily 8-10 hour shifts
"We have many local and regional customers but do work for national clients. Our client list include banks, large mortgage companies and advertising agencies on the commercial printing side, retail customers for packaging, and retailers for Point-of-Purchase work," remarked Smith, whose plant also includes UV printing, die making and cutting and fulfillment services, all under one roof containing 58,000 square feet of space.
"We use the KBA press to print everything, and the cutter and jogger help turn the 41-1/2" x 57" sheets for the catalogs, brochures, large format posters and top sheets, and Point-of-Sale plastics. The jogger is needed to help our guys move the big sheets. That's where this equipment is making an impact and more effective for our guys to get their work done."
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