Packaging Printer Posts Record Month for September - 10 Million Sheets and 1,000 Make-Ready’s for Benson Box

Midlands-based packaging specialist, Benson Box, has announced details of a record performance on the shopfloor for the month of September 2005. The company achieved the dual milestones of 10 million sheets through the presses and 1,000 make-ready’s.

The company runs five B1 format presses – two MAN Roland R700 machines and three Heidelberg units – over a twenty-four hour, six-day week.

“Whilst we have regularly passed the 9 million sheet mark, we believe that these dual milestones establish a performance level that is at the forefront of our market,” said Benson Box managing director, Mark Kerridge. “Whilst printers producing longer runs than us might certainly print more sheets, the nature of our work demands a significant amount of job changeovers, so we view the make-ready times as being just as critical to our performance as the actual number of sheets on the floor.”

In addition to an excellent production team, Kerridge attributes the exceptional shopfloor activity to a policy of continuous investment in quality equipment, and the monitoring of product performance. “We know, for example, that our latest MAN Roland press, an R706 with coater, has provided us with the best make-ready performance out of all of the presses. The QuickStart system installed on that press really has made a difference – but the fact is that we only know that because we monitor such details. It is important to our overall performance, because if we know when a machine is not producing to the levels that we would expect, we can do something about it before it affects our customers.”

The company also conducts the same level of close scrutiny on its press supplies. A recent announcement detailing the “Benson Box Blanket Challenge” emphasizes the point. “Having monitored the performance of blankets from three different suppliers, we were able to establish which blankets actually gave us the best value for money. The winner of the challenge, Vulcan’s CombiBlanket supplied by MAN Roland, is another contributing factor to our September figures. The extended life offered by this product means less blanket changes, which equals less press downtime,” commented Mark Kerridge.

Benson Box runs UV inks through all five presses at its Bardon, Leicestershire, site.

For information on MAN Roland’s full range of consumable products, contact MAN Roland Great Britain on the www.man-roland-gb.com web site, or call 020 8648 7090.