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Rick Hardesty,
left, with press operator Herb Schenck
at the finishing end of one
of two RDP Marathon presses
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Narrow Web Profile
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A North Carolina printer,
armed with powerful new
presses, prepares to penetrate
new markets.
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By Jack Kenny
Editor
Salisbury, N.C., is a small, peaceful town in Rowan County about an hour
northeast of Charlotte. Stately dwellings, including the childhood home of
Elizabeth Dole, line the main street. The town has a deep history: The
Lutheran Church recently celebrated its 250th anniversary; a large veterans
cemetery is the resting place for both Confederate and Union soldiers.
Salisbury is also the home of Rowan Business Forms Inc., a company
founded in 1921. Richard Hardesty acquired it in 1965, and today it is run
by his son, Rick Hardesty. In contrast to the tranquility of the town,
Rowan Business Forms is a place of high energy, turning $5 million in sales
a year with 44 employees.
Rick Hardesty has his eye on the new millennium. The forms business is
changing, has been changing over several years, and Hardesty plans to take
advantage of new directions on the eve of the millennium. Those new
directions include prime label converting.
"About 60 percent of our business is in conventional forms,"
Hardesty says, "which is an industry that has flattened. Conventional
forms are being replaced by laser forms, and they continue to lose volume.
The other 40 percent of our product is variably imaged, which gives us an
advantage. We have been entrenched in the forms industry since the
beginning, but we have to go beyond it now."
Variable imaging - of bar codes and sequential numbers - offers this
converter the opportunity to undertake projects that require complexity and
precision. Rowan Business Forms has made a significant investment in
imaging equipment, and today Hardesty is looking toward other markets
beyond forms. "I plan to go into the custom label field with variable
imaging," he says.
As part of his commitment to the future, Hardesty made the decision to
undertake a substantial investment in new equipment. This year saw the
delivery of two new presses manufactured by RDP Marathon, of Montreal,
Quebec. Rowan's other presses, mostly Stevens offset machines, now share
the shop floor with giants that have capabilities for offset, flexo, UV
infrared curing, plus multiple die stations and high quality variable
imaging.
Better, faster, different
A forms printer generates documents for a multitude of purposes: storage
and retrieval, membership passes, police parking tickets, government
records, payment booklets, inventory control, medical records, promotional
and gift certificate pieces, job applications, and courier tickets, to name
a few. At Rowan, 80 percent of the products are sold to end users through
an established nationwide distributor network. The rest of the products are
sold direct to customers, mostly within the Carolinas.
The company's motto, says Hardesty, is "better, faster,
different." To get beyond the flagging conventional forms business,
his company needed an injection of new and powerful capabilities. That is
the reason, he says, that he turned to RDP Marathon.
"I saw an RDP Marathon press at another company, and I was
impressed with it," Hardesty recalls. "The manufacturer is eager
to provide the customer satisfaction. They work for very demanding
customers, and they took the responsibility for providing the features and
the technology that we wanted. They comprehended what we wanted to do and
how we want to grow our product. They've given us flexibility and diversity."
The presses made by RDP Marathon (the initials stand for "Reliable,
Durable Precision") are powerful, fast and expensive. Hardesty sold a
four-color Stevens press to a Costa Rican company, and financed the rest of
the package. But why two?
"We didn't want to tie up one six-color press on a big job, and
then get backed up. Today we use one for high speed volume jobs, and the
other for high-end color work, or medium-end promotional work with volume
to it." Each 20" press is capable of speeds of up to 1,200 feet
per minute.
Flexo/offset combination
The first RDP Marathon press (they were delivered within months of each
other this year) has five offset stations; the fifth station will accept an
imprint unit or a flexo station. A UV dryer follows the fifth station,
after which is the bindery section which contains two positions for
diecutting or punching. Finishing stations will make linear or cross
perforations, and can fold, roll or sheet the stock. On this press, Rowan
employs an Ektajet imager, a non-contact inkjet variable information
printer manufactured by Scitex, which features a 1" wide imaging area.
The second new press has three offset stations, the last of which
receives the imprint unit. Following that is a flexo unit, for either water
based or UV flexo ink, after which is an IR dryer and UV curing station.
Two die stations are next, followed by punching units. The press will
deliver roll-to-fold, roll-to roll or roll-to-sheet material.
The imager on the second press, also by Scitex, is a two-part unit
composed of two 4¼ inches wide heads that image at 500 feet per minute. The
units can be married together for a maximum print width area of 8½ inches.
The offset stations are removable. Inserts with repeat lengths of
17", 22" and 28" are easily installed using a sliding
transfer module, and offer the capability of printing jobs of varying
sizes.
Rotary dies are by RotoMetrics, and most of Rowan's paper is supplied by
Mead. The flexo stations, Hardesty notes, gives Rowan the capability of
adding specialty inks, such as metallics.
Gearing up for labels
Hardesty is eagerly pursuing new horizons. "We plan to sell labels
through the distributor market," he says. "We'll target some
potentially big users of color products. We can print a four-color label,
take it to another machine and add more colors. We also plan to make
contact with other commercial printers; we might be a blessing to them
because we have this capability." That capability, he emphasizes,
includes the variable imaging, a feature not every converter possesses at
such a quality level.
Right now Hardesty and Rowan Business Forms are in an educational mode,
but not with the presses. "With some new presses, you set them up and
hope they produce what you want, then you make adjustments," he says.
"With these presses, you turn them on and they work exactly right,
every time." The education involves teaching the distributors and
customer service people about the new equipment and what it can do for the
customers.
"We have to educate people about what we are capable of
doing," he notes. "For many of them, it's unfathomable that we
can have flexo and offset in the same press."
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