At Oliver Inc.’s Hauppauge, Long Island, NY facility, the press that dominates production for its food and pharmaceutical customers in its busy pressroom is its new Koenig & Bauer Rapida 145 57-inch seven color press. This is the ninth Koenig & Bauer press purchased by the NY facility over the years and has increased total printing capacity of the facility by over 20%.
Left to right: John Bianco (lead pressman) and Nik Blake (Senior VP of operations).
“Our new Rapida 145 has more than doubled the throughput of our previous press,” says Nik Blake, Senior VP of operations and General Manager. “It outpaces the 40-inch press by 35% based on impressions per hour and 60% of our total volume is processed through the new Rapida. We continue to move work from the 40-inch presses and our goal is to now provide additional press crew for three shifts.”
While Oliver has found a solution for its capacity needs, the new Rapida has equally provided resolutions for ongoing challenges such as extended lead times, the material shortage, rising costs, and quality expectations. Its features, such as logistics for handling substrates at the feeder and delivery, fully automatic plate changing, and Koenig & Bauer QualiTronic Color Control with System Brunner Instrument Flight, allow Oliver’s management to continue to maintain its high quality standards while delivering innovative packaging solutions and supporting new business development efforts.
The new Rapida 145 also aids Oliver with its Presssign reports for Graphic Measures International (GMI) submissions and monthly performance reports. GMI certifies, monitors and measures the performance of packaging suppliers like Oliver. Its process holds them accountable to established brand owner standards. GMI helps control the variables and ensures brand integrity through printer certification, production run sample measurement and in-store packaging assessments.
“For printers producing pharmaceutical or food products with FDA panels, the new QualiTronic PDF high resolution sheet inspection system is an absolutely critical feature,” says Blake. “It runs at maximum press speed, provides the ability to inspect every printed sheet, and notifies the press operator of possible errors. Combined with our glue line inspection it allows us a minimum 200% inspection increase. For all work, it is invaluable when running at high speed as an aide to the operator who cannot pull sheets fast enough to effectively sample the quality on the run. The Rapida has set the standard in color control. We are GMI certified so Presssign reporting is invaluable to ensure compliance. This visual, continual color control tool provides superb color tolerance. It has enabled us to move very color sensitive work for our health and beauty customers with great success.”
Oliver has found that its QualiTronic System Brunner Instrument Flight has become an indispensable tool. The inclusion of the QualiTronic Instrument Flight system makes Oliver one of the printers in the U.S. with this special capability that emphasizes color balance and gray balance, taking into account more than 30 process variables. For CMYK work it works flawlessly, says Blake, controls its printed products to G7 standards, and reduces waste. It has earned a reputation as the leading inline color control system and the only system on the market that will allow Oliver’s operators to change and select the grey balance preference on press.
Blake admits that the Rapida 145 has contributed more profitability and growth into new market segments than was initially anticipated. “Our operators enjoy running the press at high speed because of the logistics, color control and inspection systems,” he says. “It is a reliable press offering the most output and best quality.”
