Brightly Designed

Like the handful of its centenarian printing peers, the 120-year-old Hennegan Company succeeds because it looks forward, not backward. The $80 million Florence, KY firm is relentlessly covered in the press as it continuously updates production platforms. For example, a 12-color Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102 hybrid perfector with inline coater, variable cutoff and roll-to-sheet infeed, added late last year, drove a wave of finishing expansion, including: a Kolbus 18-pocket, PUR-capable adhesive binder, three knife trimmer and a palletizer; and a Polar Autotrim system with Transomat loaders and unloaders.

Meanwhile, the 400-employee firm is moving rapidly through generations of digital print and mail systems, too: a 5-color Kodak NexPress 2100 plus added in January was upgraded to the larger 20´´ model 2500 in June, the first such field upgrade by Kodak since it debuted the 2100 plus last year; and a Videojet G4100 Digital Imaging System, with five integrated print heads, that supports all popular barcodes in addition to special characters, complex maps, graphics and logos at 1200 x 600 dpi and speeds up to 500 fpm.

Beyond the technology news, Hennegan is a perennial star of print competitions. For 2006, it won four Silvers and a Bronze in Sappi's North American Printer of the Year contest and best of show in both the Web Offset Assn. and PIA affiliate PIANKO competitions. These successes bespeak the firm's skills at winning top clients and a printer whose penchant for excellence in putting ink on paper is informed by decades of experience. All this works quite well as a business proposition, too—Hennegan had been running non-stop for four weeks when we spoke to management last month.

One factor in the present abundance of output volume is a reduced sensitivity to pricing on high-end work from top designers, who these days have become, perhaps surprisingly, well-informed about paper and ink performance. Their skills in forecasting visual impact have so improved with the use of software and desktop proofing that they've had the time to really dig into the world of paper brightness and texture—and even the predictive behavior of graphic reproduction on specific press equipment.

As a result, paper and ink pricing are diminished as issues in job cost. Once loads of money are spent on photo shoots, graphics rights and top-level copywriting, reproduction quality expectations must be met with certainty. Specifications often call simply for the “highest quality” premium enamel grades and coated No. 1 sheets, just like the good old days!

Quite possibly, the top echelon of print media is the world of fashion design and apparel advertising. Print still conveys color, cut and fabric far better than the Internet or television—and can reach target audiences in more sophisticated and efficient ways. “More than a decade ago, our business was about 70% web and 30% sheetfed,” says Sam Julier, Hennegan account executive, recalling the days when cost per thousand dominated purchase decisions. “Today, it is the exact opposite.” Hennegan has no formal house sheet.

“We look at the total coverage,” Julier says. “If the sheet is 100% coverage, then the brightness specification is not of the greatest importance.” Full coverage concerns, these days, center around finish (i.e., “snap” or glossiness), and matte or “softness,” “feel”, etc.), the “galvanizing” effect and picking—a concern that arises frequently as presses lengthen.

“When the layout has a [significant] degree of unprinted or empty areas, then brightness is the key issue,” Julier says, and then, “We look for blue-whiteness, noting color combinations and ink coverage within and around the images.” Premium coated and No. 1 coated grades are exclusively used in this segment, with jobs specifying papers such as Utopia from Appleton (Arjo Wiggins), Centura from Stora Enso North America and McCoy from Sappi.

As paper design characteristics within a premium grade specification, not price tag, are the focus, graphic designers seem to know that dropping from a No.1 coated grade to a No.2 for price is simply foolish and self-defeating.

Instead, blue-whiteness, finish and feel are chief in their minds. Graphic designers today understand opacity (for show-through/strike-through on multi-page print media products), basis weight (for feel and mailing considerations), even things like angle of gloss measurement (for light transmittance) and porosity/density (for aging effects, such as yellowing).

Further enriching its premium sheetfed print options, Hennegan has adopted hybrid UV/conventional technologies and became an early tester of INX International's Fusion hybrid inks. “Fusion hybrids are printing extremely well—very sharp, as sharp as conventional inks.,” says Jim Tillery, Hennegan's director of sheetfed operations. “While we run mostly conventional inks, as well as standard UV and hybrids, we used to have a separate dot-gain curve for hybrid inks. But now we go from conventional inks right into hybrid—without reconfiguring presses or conditioning rollers.”

INX says it developed the UV-curable Fusion to print, handle and wash up like conventional oil-based sheetfed inks, as a next-generation successor to its VersaCure UV hybrid line.

“When a product line, in this case Fusion, is ready to run, we look to firms like Hennegan for feedback in order to further refine and strengthen our offering,” says Jon Graunke, director of UV curable systems at INX R&D unit.

Hennegan has been running with the ink for about a year, says Tillery. Designed to work on a wide variety of substrates, it performs on even metallized plastics and polypropylene labels. The company check's dine levels of plastic substrates to predict ink adherence.

“We noted several issues when we first ran Fusion,” Tillery says. One surprise: it's compatible with conventional dampening solutions, so the specialized chemistries adopted for VersaCure were no longer necessary.

“All told, we run hundreds of substrates,” notes Tillery. “Fusion hybrids provide exceptional adhesion,” he says, adding that it has excellent flow and transfer properties. “It prints stronger than other hybrids. The black is much denser. We're always shooting for a nice, heavy black—especially for fine reverse printing. Fusion's is about 30 points denser; we can push it up close to 180—and still it cures.”

www.sappi.com, us.storaenso.com/na, inxinc.com, us.heidelberg.com, kolbus.com, graphics.kodak.com and appletonideas.com