Market
SPOTLIGHT
Florida sun printing
USA
“Color is hot in local newspapers, and growing in local promotion and direct-mail printing.
WorkMates NEWS helps us prep more color jobs quickly, so we are able to
print high-quality, attractively priced, fast turnaround color work on
newsprint. That keeps our business growing.”
- Mark Thompson , Owner - Florida Sun Printing
Just north of Jacksonville is Callahan,
Florida (population 962), hometown of
full-service commercial cold-web color
printer, Florida Sun Printing (FSP). Though
not a newspaper itself, FSP prints many
weekly newspapers, as well as colorful
shoppers, flyers, circulars, magazines,
booklets, mailers and other tabloid and
half-tab products for other firms. The
successful company’s sales revenue has
grown over 20% in the past five years and
it now draws business from clients as far
west as Missouri and East Texas, and as
far north as New York.
Owner Mark Thompson comes from a
family history of printing. He bought the
business from a newspaper chain in
2003. Thompson’s know-how and past
printing experience told him it would be
challenging to maximize FSP’s potential
and become a stand-out cold web printer,
able to quickly print high-quality color on
newsprint at the lowest possible cost.
He met the challenge with state-of-the-
art technology investments to greatly
increase the firm’s overall capabilities,
productivity, efficiency and throughput.
Making Customer Files Work
Thompson offers prepress as a prime
example, “Customers supply their files
to us digitally, as PDFs. Our prepress
uses both Macs and PCs, and these
operate within our state-of the-art, ECRM
WorkMates NEWS prepress workflow
that culminates in plates being imaged
computer-to-plate and processed.”
The WorkMates NEWS software
automatically checks and adjusts
every PDF file. “It preflights each file
automatically and finds any errors. A
very common error is that images will
be in RGB format, instead of CMYK.
Or, spot colors need to be converted
to CMYK or black. The software can fix
these automatically, as well as resolving
any other problems with the file. We can
preset the criteria. WorkMates NEWS then
automatically imposes, pairs pages
and proofs them. What’s more, the
WorkMates NEWS software even
sends the presets to the Quickset
software that produces a printout
for the pressman to guide color
adjustment on the ink fountains.
Time-savings just add-up.”
Quantity Savings
These process time-savings
compress cycle times as more
and more jobs need to be prepped.
“It’s a far cry from manual prepress,”
Thompson remarks. “Our prepress
currently makes about 3,500 plates
per month on a BasysPrint platesetter
that images UV plates that we process
manually. For printing, our quad-stack,
4-over-4 perfecting press by Web
Press Corporation is fast, flexible and
dependable.”
FSP’s prepress now sends about 42,000
plates a year to the press, a substantial
volume that Thompson credits to the role
played by its WorkMates NEWS software.
“Files have to be ‘right’ before they can be
imaged to plate,” he says. “Our prepress
workflow must dependably prep the
files so that they’re consistently correct.
We’ve chosen our people and prepress
technology with extra care, to make sure
plates flow to the press right on-schedule
and ready to print. ECRM WorkMates
NEWS software does it all; it’s easy to
learn and use, and it delivers for FSP
every day.”
Making Color Work
Thompson concludes: “Color is hot in
local newspapers, and growing in local
promotion and direct-mail printing.
WorkMates NEWS helps us prep more
color jobs quickly, so we are able to
print high-quality, attractively priced, fast
turnaround color work on newsprint. And
that keeps our business growing.”
ECRM Headquarters:
554 Clark Road
Tewksbury, MA 01876
USA
Tel: (+1) 978.851.0207
Fax: (+1) 978.851.7016
sales@ecrm.com