Graphco Highlights Value of Adding LED-UV Curing to Offset Pressrooms

Graphco, the Midwest and Southeastern U.S. Distributor for RMGT, GEW UV and the U.S. Distributor for Foliant Laminators, will feature the theme Refresh Your Pressroom at the PRINT 19 show held in Chicago, Ill., on Sept.3-5, 2019. To highlight this theme, visitors to the Graphco booth will see the value of adding LED-UV curing to their offset pressroom and live demonstrations will be presented in the booth showcasing a variety of Foliant laminating solutions. 

“At each show since 2014, Graphco has demonstrated solutions that provide our customers with ‘The Unfair Advantage’ and this year will be no exception,” states Chris Manley, president of Graphco. “We have observed a very strong trend among printers who are updating their pressrooms to take advantage of vast improvements in automation and print quality. Since we began our RMGT distribution, 39 commercial printers, book printers and in-plants in our territory have replaced aging presses with efficient and durable RMGT offset presses. Thirty-four of these are equipped with LED-UV curing. Economics is driving the decision to pull jobs traditionally sent to digital and move them back to offset.  Being able to offer high value-add print is like icing on the cake.  As we like to say, RMGT offers ‘Offset Quality at Digital Quantities’. We are focusing on this trend at PRINT 19 this year.”

2019 marks the 11^th anniversary of LED-UV curing technology for sheet-fed offset printing (first shown by Ryobi at DRUPA 2008) and RMGT was the first press manufacturer to offer fully integrated LED-UV curing systems as a factory installed option. With so many companies adding new LED-UV equipped RMGT presses, the Graphco Refresh Your Pressroom program will now bring the advantages of LED-UV curing to even more customers. One unique feature of this program is a direct upgrade stream for customers who add LED-UV to their existing press and then later purchase a new RMGT offset press. The versatility and open architecture of GEW’s third generation LeoLED-UV System is the key to this fantastic program.

Beginning in 2018, Graphco and GEW (EC) Limited entered into an exclusive distribution agreement and Graphco is now offering GEW’s LeoLED-UV curing systems on their new RMGT press installations. The identical GEW curing systems are also now available on legacy Ryobi offset presses as well as other brands of sheet-fed offset presses. “GEW’s market leadership in the energy curing for print world has offered our customers The Unfair Advantage of Modular Lamp Arrays to enhance curing depth and gloss levels.  The GEW true Internet of Things remote technical support has been great in the few cases we have needed it. Graphco and our customers could not ask for a better partner than GEW,” comments Chris Manley.

“Our partnership with Graphco is off to a great start with 12 GEW LED-UV equipped presses either installed or in production,” states Gary Doman, International Sales Manager for GEW. “The Graphco team has built a great brain trust of LED-UV experience with so many installations in so many market segments. Commercial printers, book printers, and in-plants are all embracing our technology.  Our friends at Push Solutions, who are running lots of plastics and folding carton work on their GEW LED-UV equipped RMGT are one prime example.”

As the master distributor for Foliant Laminators, Graphco will be expanding the Refresh Your Pressroom theme by running live laminating jobs on the show floor. Visitors to the booth will be able to see the Mercury 530NG along with the Mercury 400NG with integrated pallet stacker in live operation. “As our partnership with Foliant enters the second year, momentum is really building," observes Manley. " We want to showcase the workhorse Mercury line-up at PRINT 19, so we added booth space to run these machines at full speed in a production environment.  Our total throughput is a key differentiator for Foliant. The Mercury 400NG we will exhibit was sold to BR Printers who is adding two of these machines in two of their plants around the US.”

“We look forward to welcoming our guests to the Graphco Refresh Your Pressroom booth #2201. I’m certain that with all the great solutions we have to offer, our visitors will find many ways to both grow their business and reduce their manufacturing costs,” concludes Manley.

Source: Graphco