Page 26 - Print 21 Magazine Nov-Dec 2018

Production
IVE opens $50m new super automated Franklin Web NSW
IVE has officially opened its $50m Franklin Web NSW print centre, wowing guests at the opening with its unprecedented levels of automation, reports Wayne Robinson.
The 15,000sqm Franklin Web NSW site is a remarkable print centre. Fully automated, it operates 24 hours a day seven days a week, and is capable of producing four million pages an hour, all with just ten staff on site at any one time, with 34 overall on the payroll. Human touch on the print is virtually nothing.
The new plant has been designed to serve the catalogue and long run magazine market in NSW and Queensland and replicates the equipment at Franklin Web in Victoria, with Geoff Selig, executive chairman of IVE describing the catalogue sector as ‘going gangbusters’.
Warwick Hay, managing director, IVE Group says, “The new Huntingwood
plant’s capacity, when combined with the Franklin Web site in Melbourne, gives us the production flexibility to meet customer demands across the nation."
“Franklin Web is the cornerstone to our expansion into the catalogue market. The final phase of the project delivers a competitive advantage for our customers and expands our world-class operation, future-proofing the business.”
In charge of the site is general manager Richard Clark, who came from AIW in Melbourne which his father Peter Clark founded in 2002 and which at the time of its launch was the most automated heatset site in the country; IVE bought AIW, along with Franklin Web, for $120m. Phil Taylor, former owner of Franklin Web, is now stepping back from the business.
The new NSW print centre, located next to the motorway network, has two huge manroland Lithoman 80pp presses, which each run a 2.06m wide web pumping out work at 16 metres a second. There is just one printer for each press per shift, and another one floating between the two presses. The Lithomans run non-stop 24 hours a day seven days a week.
The Kodak plateroom is virtually lights out, producing 280,000sqm of plates a year. All prepress is handled at Franklin’s Victoria
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site, which also takes care of production planning and scheduling.
Gammeler postpress is highly automated, with robots loading pallets, and Rima log stackers for preparing the print for the bindery. Postpress has been designed so
that both lines are doubled up, and if one line fails the presses will both feed into the other, giving double insurance. The bindery has a Muller Martini Corona 15,000 an
hour perfect binder and two Muller Martini 25,000 an hour saddle stitchers. IVE also has another similar perfect binding line at its Webstar business in nearby Silverwater.
The paper store is about to get AGVs to take the rolls onto the presses. The new
site will print around 5000 tonnes of print each month. Each roll of paper, which has around 22 kilometers of paper on the reel, takes just 23 minutes to print. All paper is PEFC certified, and comes from Tasmania, Scandinavia and North America. The site holds seven to eight weeks worth of stock, around 10,000 tonnes of paper, and will print enough paper each year that if it were unrolled, it would get to the moon and back.
The plant has been designed to ensure that even in the unlikely event of any machine breakdown production will not stop, with dual lines of prepress, press and finishing on site, and any part of the operation having the ability to switch production to Silverwater or Sunshine at a moment’s notice if necesssary. 21
Above: 10,000 tonnes in paper storage feeding two 80pp Lithomans 24/7.
Franklin Web NSW in numbers:
• Operation: 24/7
• Staff: 34
• Staff on site at any one time: 10
• Prepress: 2 x Kodak Magnum lines
• Plates: 280,000sqm pa
• Heatset presses:
2 x manroland Lithoman 80pp
• Speed: 16 metres a second
• Output: 4 million pages an hour
• Presses running: 24/7
– they never stop
• Printers to run them: 3 per shift,
one each and one floating
• Robots: 4 in 2 x postpress lines
• Bindery:
2 x Muller Martini saddlestictchers
1 x Muller Martini perfect binder
• Paper: 5000 tonnes per month
• Paper in stock: 10,000 tonnes
• Annual paper consumption:
to the moon and back
• Paper printing: 23 minutes per reel
• Paper reel length: 22kms
• Recycling: 100 per cent plates
• Recycling: 100 per cent paper waste.