Two in one System 38S investment for Turkey's Ertem Printing

Ertem Printing’s mega investment in two Komori System 38S 16-page web presses sees the company’s first two Komori machines being installed simultaneously at its 14,000 sq. metre production facility within a 30,000 sq. metre print factory, purpose built for Ertem in Turkey’s capital city, Ankara where it employs over 350 personnel.

The company was founded in 1986 by Mustafa Ertem who, after working part time as a typesetter to help finance his University studies, bought a Gestetner duplicating machine to print small jobs for his clients and has enjoyed continued growth throughout all the 32 years since.

Ertem now provides a one stop turnkey operation under one roof for clients worldwide and including blue chip publishers such as National Geographic, Cambridge University Press, Walker Books and Klett Publishing. The bulk of its workload comprises top quality books for children's leisure and education, university learning, fiction and non-fiction books, catalogues and newsprint.

It houses finished jobs in a dedicated 7,000 sq. metre air-controlled warehouse which incorporates electronically controlled logistics to provide flexible, ultra-fast response and delivery to meet clients' call-off demands.

Although seventy percent of Ertem’s work is produced by web offset, Komori had never, previously, figured on the company’s plant list, where, until recently, cold set webs and Heidelberg sheet fed machines prevailed, alongside a truly exceptional line up of finishing equipment.

Mr Ertem explains the rationale behind the move to heat set web and the selection of two Komori 16-page presses, furthermore, purchasing both in the same timeframe: “It was initially a customer driven investment created because our Ministry of Education in Turkey decided to upgrade and produce its educational books on coated paper. Several other customers followed suit those who sell educational books to private schools, for which the print quality also now obviously needed to equal or exceed that of the Ministry’s public sector material.

“The additional incentive for Ertem was that we knew that by providing our publishing clients with the new benefits of heat set web print and consequently making them stronger in their markets, they would need additional capacity and consequently this would lead to more business opportunities for us!

The Aras and Komori winning formula
“We checked on all the suitable commercial heat set webs, which is new territory for us. The combined benefits of Komori’s reputation and reliability in this field and our long standing excellent business relationship with Aras Grup, who have always supplied us with excellent service, put the System 38’s at the top of the list.

“Aras and Komori provided us with the opportunity to take a very close look at a similar Komori 16-page web in Brazil where we were able to put our own work on the machine. The results confirmed that the System 38S was right for us. We believe Japanese technology is the most advanced in the world, with even the smallest details considered to ensure that the machine and print quality are as close to perfection as possible. And that’s certainly true of the System 38S.
“We’re also very sensitive to the environment so the energy and material savings of the System 38 machines were a welcome bonus which fit well into our eco-initiatives.

“Our desire is to produce high quality books for students and the Komori System 38S webs give us the quality and capacity to extend our educational print custom even further afield internationally. Even though educational book production does tend to be seasonal, outside its peak times, our new production facilities will enable us to produce more insert and brochure print for the advertising and promotional markets, where very fast turnround time and highest quality are of paramount importance.”
Ertem recently acquired FOGRA PSO (ISO12647) accreditation and already has in place the Kodak INSITE pre-press portal, providing access to Prinergy workflow for customers and its own departments. So, all can expedite 24/7 job progress, tracking, checking and collaboration on adjustments and changes with minimum disruption and delay.

Ertem has also added two latest generation Fuji Luxel T-9800 B1 platesetters bringing its total to three and increasing platemaking capacity to 200 plates an hour. Says Mr Ertem: “We anticipate the System 38S webs will give us the firepower to increase our turnover by 20 percent, and so we’re also quite prepared to add or upgrade across the company, including in the finishing department if needed, to ensure total production turnround schedules will meet national and international expectations.”