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November 2004
Pioneer Print is a West Auckland based printer producing a range of work from its two presses – one GTO
and one Ryobi. It is a traditional jobbing shop with an emphasis on quality and productivity.
The 1996 model GTO52 which the company bought after seeing it advertised in Inky Fingers, has been a solid
performer for Pioneer Print over the years. However, their decision to replace the original Heidelberg DDS
Direct Dampening System on the GTO with a Varn Kompac dampening unit has supercharged their production.
The Varn dampening unit, was sought and purchased from APM, after manager Terry Bradley read a recent article
in Inky Fingers about a simlar unit being installed at South Auckland’s Precision Print.
The installation went very smoothly, Terry says, taking two weeks from the moment that Pioneer Print agreed
to the installation until the time it was up and running. Having known and dealt with Alex Peters of APM
for many years, Terry says that everything was done to make sure that the installation was problem free,
and it succeeded.
Since the installation, production has markedly improved, Terry says, with one of the main benefits being in
improved makeready times. "The day's production is no longer having to be planned around the problems that
we suffer with water. We are able to do what we want, when we want.
"The unit is very simple and very effecting. It has completely changed the GTO," he says.
Factory supervisor Tom Williams says that wash ups are down to six or seven minutes and makereadies have
improved out of sight, coming down to five minutes, from the previous mark of 30-45 minutes.
The issue of job timing has been considerable cleared up as well, Tom says: “Previously there were certain
jobs we couldn’t do in the mornings, because it was too wet and, likewise, there were certain jobs we couldn't
do in the afternoons. That ha all changed no."
He adds that downtime on the GTO has been reduced dramatically, with the press being up to two to three hours
more productive per day.
Terry says that the extra productivity has enable the company to take on extra work in recent times: “We’ve
really been soaking the work up recently thanks in part to the Varn. It’s a matter of working smarter, not
harder.”
Photo: Tom Williams (left) and Terry Bradley with the Varn unit of their GTO.
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