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FASTRACK TO THE FUTURE
The steady progress of Portwell Press over the company's 55-year history has been made without increasing the company's capacity, explains Stuart Bambury, one of the company's three partners. His comments seem to reflect the Faringdon-based printer's determination to establish a reputation for quality rather than to focus on expanding its printing facilities. 'But more and more people are wanting their printing delivered in shorter and shorter times,' Stuart explains; a trend that the company has been quick to identify and react to. Its response was to adopt Autotype's new, high-speed polyester offset plate - the OMEGA Fast. The new plate was introduced following a two-year development process during which Autotype totally reformulated the original OMEGA Plus 2 and E-Z printing plates. The end result was a new plate that limits downtime by requiring no pre-press plate preparation. The impact of this technology is to facilitate quicker changeovers than with metal plates and enable faster start-up times. Autotype's new printing plate also provides high levels of print quality -120 lpi - and represents a cost-effective alternative to traditional metal and polyester media. The fact that no harmful chemicals are required also means the plate is cost-effective, easy to use and removes environmental and safety concerns. After trialling 'inferior' printing plates, Stuart says the company bought the OMEGA Fast with the intention of the new plate gradually taking over from its previous plates. Stuart admits: 'The amount we use of the old plates is decreasing quickly as we switch to Autotype's new plates.' Stuart goes on to say that he is particularly impressed with the easy-to-use characteristics of the new plate and the quick changeovers that are now possible. 'There is no preparation - you can stop in the middle of a job to talk to a customer and the machine takes care of everything. More importantly, the plate looks after itself.' The shorter down times between jobs, Stuart suggests, should mean that Portwell Press will be able to satisfy the increasing demand for quicker job turnarounds. Stuart says: 'Work can be produced quickly and more easily.' Since it was established in 1946, Portwell Press has experienced most of the radical changes the print industry has seen. The impact of desktop publishing and consumer demand for printing services has perhaps been the greatest. Stuart believes that with increasing amounts of electronically delivered work arriving through his door, his use of the new OMEGA Fast printing plate will only increase. 'The more work is computerised, the more Autotype product we will use.'
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