In-House Printing Good idea, or not

[GJB]

Hello,

I am working for a wholesale/distribution company that is exploring buying an offset press, ctp system, etc. to bring our printing in-house. About 2 years ago we brought all our graphic design work in-house (away from agencies) with a lot of success (better results, lower costs). We currently print about $500k per year. The majority of the printing is catalogs/brochures, business cards, sell sheets (1-page fliers), small to midsize posters, and stickers. All of our runs are over 1,000 pieces per item. We already have large format ink-jet printers and vinyl cutters & printers for smaller jobs and one-offs. I guess my questions are:

1. Do we do enough printing to make this worth it?
2. If so, what kind of equipment should we buy? (I am pretty sure we can get away with a quarter-size press)
3. We also do some contract manufacturing of our own products. If so, could we print rolls of labels with a sheet-fed press? This isn't as important as it's not as much volume, but I thought if someone was making equipment like this, it might be worth it to buy it.

-Greg

 

[turbotom1052]

i think that 500k a year in printing could be recouped within a year or 2 by bringing your work in house, particularly if you already have the space. You wouldnt need state of the art equiptment but i would suggest quality used stuff. A Heidleberg GTO with at least 5 units would do a nice job for you. If your serious about doing this i would suggest that your first acquisition be, to hire a seasoned pro to help you get the ball rolling. The money spent on his salary will prove to be well spent by his ability to not only lead the department but to guide you in making the right equipment decisions. Do yourself a favor and try and steer clear of polyester plates and all the limitations they bring. If you want to do nice work you will need to use metal plates and a ctp unit that will handle them.
As far as printing labels, that can be done sheetfed by purchasing sheeted label stock of either the peel and stick variety or the gummed variety.

 

[WiseGuy]

Just for more for you to think about....

If you do bring it "in-house" you're going to have to have a prepress person, and software to support it. A good pressman. Someone that can run finishing equipment, and of course, the finishing equipment itself – cutters, collators, saddle stitcher, etc... Also, you may have to upgrade facilities to support the press and such. You can't just toss a GTO on the second floor of an office building.

I would look to one of the used equipment dealers and get a price on a full set-up, then compare the capital cost and on-going against the savings. Also, has anyone done some competitive biding on the work you do already? It could be you could squeeze some more savings out of your current print costs. There is a lot of excess capacity out there. Also, the other big question is, do you think you'll be printing the same volume in 3-5 years? As many companies have seen, the call for printed materials has dropped due to electronic distribution of flyers of such.

Bringing printing in-house is a little more difficult than buying some Macs with Design Suite 5 and hiring a couple designers. The equipment is more expensive and complex. There is lots of support equipment you need to have and more specialized employees to run it all.

Good luck.... I hope this was helpful.

 

[ondemandbindery]

I personally would not look at one piece of equipment until an analysis was competently done on your market. In your distribution business is this a market where there will continue to be a demand/need/requirement for you to sell your product with Printed material? Which direction is the printed material volume moving in your market (up or down?, there is no third direction). The game is changing every day by leaps and bounds in this industry. An example is pharmaceutical. We are very far away from when that industry becoming paper less and will most likely never happen. Automotive parts wholesalers are well aware of the decrease in Printed material for their industry.

Just like everything else, it will come down to the ROI. This Printing thing is easier said than done but my thought is if the situation fits your industry and you wanted to bring it in house there is a cess pool of talent on the streets so it is a viable option.

Good luck,
JW

 

[GJB]

Thanks guys, alot of this has been very helpful. We do have some guys here who have some prepress experience. We also have a fair amount of room within our current buildings. In addition, we do run some large format printers and vinyl cutters for making one-off or very short runs on custom signs.

We are also pretty good at squeezing down costs from all of our suppliers, but my project at this point is to figure out the payback on purchasing the equipment. It has been a little difficult to figure out the cost of goods on production of some elements.

We are in a face-to-face business where printed material is king. I can confidently say it will probably never go away. (We buy beer coasters in 20' containers).

Thanks

 

[graficworx]

When you look at purchasing any type of printing equipment, you need to have a good idea of what print jobs you curretly run, and what you might want to run in the future. This determines what type of press you will need. What types of paper stocks do you currently have printed? If you require 14 pt stock or heavier, this will determine the type of press you need. Do you require coating, UV or Aqueous? What is the maximum finished size of paper you currently have? While you could get away with a smaller press, if you got a larger one you could gang up jobs, and run fewer impressions for the same number of finished sheets. Also, that would be less plates, plate changes, etc...

If you are serious, I also recommend hiring a print consultant to do a complete analysis. You don't want to buy too small a press or too large of one either. If your ROI is 24 months, that's great, but your capacity will stay the same. It's sometimes better to have a larger press that sits idle a little bit now, verses not being able to handle peak capacity when it comes in.

Also, it might be worth contacting Heidelberg to get a quote for what would basically be a brand new print shop. They offer hardware and software solutions that I've seen really smooth out a workflow. The pre-press software can output the plates, set the ink keys, and even send the paper cut measurements to the cutter. Heidelberg is expensive, but it can be worth it. Komori's arent bad either, but Heidelberg's are built to last much longer than any other press on the market.

Also, another thing to consider is if they would fit your current work, DI presses from Presstek or KBA, which are nice since they illuminate platemaking and mounting, and since you are starting from scratch it might make sense. Presstek has leasing options also.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Is your print production a steady flow of products throughout the year? Will you manage to use it wisely throughout the year? A static number is not even a 2 dimensional representation of your needs. Don't mean to be the sceptic... just having suppliers you can get the best production for each product.