Loading

"DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF IS THE BEST WAY TO MAKE A LIVING."

By using Horizon machines, the Cologne-based printing company Flock ensures high flexibility and added value in finishing.

The takeover of Cologne-based printing company Flock brought Georg Gottwald many years of ups and downs. Permanent adjustments to changing market situations and the concentration on business customers ensured competitiveness in the end. The high added value necessary for success is achieved primarily through the use of Horizon machines in the finishing process.

"It was not my intention at all to own a printing company," says Georg Gottwald. But as soon as the now 44-year-old had passed his master craftsman's examination, things turned out differently than planned. "A supplier of the company where I was an apprentice at the time ask me if I would be interested in taking over a long-established printing company," recalls Gottwald. The key data made a good impression: founded in 1969, the Cologne-Pesch-based printing company Flock had a solid customer base of companies and agencies, served exclusively business customers with a team of ten dedicated and experienced specialists and enjoyed well-filled order books. However, the owner now wanted to retire from professional life and was looking for a suitable successor."Everything fitted together well, also on the personal level," reports Georg Gottwald. Just 24 years old, however, he did not feel up to the role of entrepreneur on his own. He teamed up with a friend and colleague, and the new owners of the printing company set to work with ambition and enthusiasm.

Stony road to success

Enthusiasm was followed by disillusionment a few years later. With the rapid spread of digital printing, customer requirements changed and at the same time the aging machinery had to be renewed. Delays in delivery and unexpected technical problems with the commissioning of replacement equipment put the company owner and staff in an increasingly difficult situation. "At times, not a single functioning machine was available in the 800 m² production area. In order to be able to fulfil existing orders, we had to relocate the work to other printing plants," says Georg Gottwald. To keep costs under control, the printing company Flock had to downsize and change location. From Cologne-Pesch, the company finally moved to the Frechen district, to an industrial estate near the Cologne-West motorway junction. In the end it took more than ten years for the company to stabilize the situation, which had become precarious in the meantime, and to find a solid base again. Giving up was not an option for the professional offset printer. While his partner was reorienting himself professionally, Gottwald persistently stayed with the company and now bears responsibility as sole owner. Today, printing company Flock has state-of-the-art machinery on 600 m² of production space in Cologne-Marsdorf, and with a workforce reduced to five people, the company feels well prepared for the future.

Focus on offset printing

Georg Gottwald attributes this success to the high level of vertical integration in his company, which gives the Flock printing company an added value in the region of 90 percent. The company mainly supplies industrial companies within a radius of a good 100 kilometres. Regular customers secure 80 percent of the order volume. While many other competitors have switched over to digital printing, Gottwald is consistently sticking to offset production with a five-colour Heidelberg CD-102-5 LX press: "We primarily produce long runs of brochures, posters, flyers and catalogues. Offset printing is still the most economical option here". Because customers design all products themselves, prepress only involves the preparation of the print data provided and thus generates hardly any costs.

Highest potential in finishing

Although Gottwald sees high-quality, high-performance printing technology on the one hand, the greatest potential for value creation lies in finishing. "Initially, we concentrated entirely on printing and left work such as folding or stitching to other service providers," says the company boss. "As a small company, we could not have financed the necessary specialist personnel at all. This changed when Georg Gottwald became aware of Horizon products about five years ago. Initially, he was only looking for a folding machine for processing large 70/100 formats. The decision was made in favour of a Horizon AFC-746F. As a cross folding machine for the B1 format, the system has six buckle plates and two fold knife stations, and the paper is fed either by pallet or round pile feeder. The fold patters and formats can be selected quickly and conveniently on the touchscreen, and fully automated adjustment replaces time-consuming adjustment of the individual components, thus reducing set-up times. In keeping with the philosophy of simple operation, the AFC-746F does not require any specialist personnel - and thus meets the requirements of small businesses in particular.

Rapid expansion of machinery

Satisfied with the performance of the folding machine and the associated Horizon Service all round, Georg Gottwald rapidly expanded the vertical range of finishing operations. The machinery now also includes a Horizon BQ-270 perfect binder as well as a PSX-56 pack delivery with pressing unit, which can be used flexibly and as required on the saddle stitcher or folding machine. The PSX-56 presses the incoming products and stacks them into handy packs, thus making the most of the performance of the fast-running machines and making production even more profitable. Finally, a Horizon StitchLiner Mark III saddle stitching system including a VAC-L600H collator with four towers serves as the "backbone" of the Flock printing company. At the touch of a button and in a matter of seconds, it retrieves prepared jobs and produces saddle-stitched brochures of the highest quality at a speed of up to 6,000 copies per hour: As a high-performance system for industrial production, the StitchLiner Mark III is now one of the world's most popular solutions for achieving optimum profitability in booklet production. Reliable processing of A4 landscape brochures is made possible by the VAC-L600H collating machine, which can accommodate sheets up to 610 mm in length. Parameters such as overlap, speed, suction and blowing air can be individually adjusted and guarantee perfect results even with critical papers.

For Georg Gottwald, the flexibility of the finishing department is a major factor in securing the existence of the entire printing plant: "In our small team, practically everyone must be able to do everything. Whenever necessary and there's no other way, the salesman is sometimes at the folding machine. With the Horizon machines this can be done without any problems, otherwise we would hardly be able to ensure the profitability of our production."

Competitive advantage: FSC certification

In addition to the efficiency of its machinery, Georg Gottwald also keeps an eye on changes in the market environment. For example, a public-sector customer recently demanded proof of FSC certification as a prerequisite for participation in the tendering process for a major project. In view of the costs associated with certification, Gottwald initially hesitated until it heard about the possibility of group certification: several small companies, each with a maximum of 15 employees or annual turnover of no more than three million euros, will be combined into a group and jointly certified. The costs are significantly lower than those of individual certification, making it affordable for the Flock printing company, and in the end, it even paid off directly by winning the tender. For the future, Georg Gottwald expects that more and more customers will pay attention to seals of approval and that FSC certification will certainly be a competitive advantage. Despite difficult phases, in retrospect he is happy that he dared to take the leap into entrepreneurial independence. His tip: "Stay on the ball and don't bury your head in the sand. Somehow there is always a solution."


Add/View comments for this article →
0 Comments
user

Wed March 13th

Trends in packaging con...

4 trends are emerging in 2024: AI, Sustainability, Automation and Talent.

Fri March 8th

Financing

Let's take a deep dive into financing and our very own CEO, Henrik Klem Lassen, who has a Master's Degree in Economics.

Mon March 4th

Hiflow solutions releas...

HiFlow Solutions releases free APP with packaging & imposition for estimators.

Thu February 29th

Printvis announces inte...

PrintVis, the business management MIS/ERP for the printing industry, announces its integration with LoyaltyLoop

Wed February 21st

Will you pay for ai-gen...

With AI, ChatGPT and Language Models it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate human-made from AI - does AI content have value?

Thu February 15th

How to get the most out...

You bought a system a while ago, how do you know you are getting your money's worth?

Wed February 14th

Designnbuy launches des...

Supercharge Your Web-to-Print Business with Unprecedented Personalization, Design Flexibility, and Efficiency

Sun February 11th

Graphic village on the ...

The recent Printing Impressions Top 300 has been an exciting study of how we see value in our industry.

Tue February 6th

Designo v1.8: revolutio...

Join Design’N’Buy for a FREE webinar and discover how their revolutionary technology DesignO V1.8 can transform your print business!

Fri January 19th

Ray stasieczko is a thr...

Keep up the good work, and accept that a stronger end-of-the-day-with-Ray will challenge you on many levels