The 3600 inserting system is one of the company’s high level lines
Kern opened its doors to customers old and new at its site in Munsingen, Switzerland, to show the product portfolio that has allowed it to grow while mail volumes have shrunk. Michal Lodej reports.
It is safe to say that mailing houses and their suppliers were among the worst affected by the emergence of digital communications. As the company’s customers have had to adapt, so too has Kern, while maintaining its tradition of high quality manufacturing.
Pete Jolley, general manager, said; ‘The main aim of the open house was to show the products we have now and also what our customers can expect in the next 12 months. This includes our new envelope production system, which is here on a kind of ‘suck it and see’ basis. As it is a complex system, we can use our customers feedback to help the development of the machine. It’s also a good opportunity for our customers to come and see Kern, with a factory tour here where the company began, and we have had a good mix of new and old customers.
‘It’s a relaxed environment here which gives our guests a lot of time to look around the whole demo site and look in detail at what they are interested in, with the advantage of being able to talk to the partners we have on site.
‘As for our UK customers, there hasn’t been any significant exhibition this year so we thought it was better to do an open house. There has already been talk of us holding another one in the future, but there has to be a reason for it, such as a new release for example.’
The focus of this open house was the two newest mailing lines in the company’s portfolio, the 3600, an upgrade from the 3500, and the 5000 multiformat system.
‘The 3600 is a development of the 3500, but has a lot of new technology which has automated many of the adjustments, and up time has been increased to allow the machine to be operated by just one person.’
The 3600 will be available from 2015, but Mr Jolley toldDigital Printerthat there has already been a sale of this system. Although the company cannot be named, Mr Jolley said that the unit will replace a number of Kern 3200s which have been running for more than 10 years and only now need to be upgraded.
Kern’s Daniel Wenger spoke about the company’s newest offerings. He said; ‘The 3600 is the next step in the 3000 series. It is a high performance system for medium to high volume jobs with automatic settings and the possibility to change formats without stopping. The system works with a linear flow of materials up to 27,000 cycles per hour with new packing load for thicknesses of 0.1 to 8 mm.’
The 3600 inserting system is one of the company’s high level lines and has undergone extensive field tests with customers during development. The machine has been designed to make it easier to operate with a focus on keeping down time to a minimum and improving operator access. The machine can run with documents between 82 x 148 mm and 356 x 225 mm.
He continued; ‘The K5000 is a multiformat inserting system, combining with the W+D inserting system. With C4 formats the unit can run up to 12,000 cycles an hour and 16,000 per hour at all other formats. Format change between folding and other applications can be done in less than three minutes.
‘The new system comes with mailFactory, which can help take the jobs by reading the data on the can a closed loop system that gives the operator all the information available.’
The 5000 is the manifestation of the partnership Kern has made with W+D. The system integrates W+D’s TIprint 4dl, a four colour printer using Impika print heads, for printing onto the front and back of envelopes and W+D’s BB700 inserting system.
‘The 5000 will take Kern into a different market, transactional print, but the relationship with W+D will also help us grow stronger in the direct mail market. These markets are being forced together as a lot of printers and mailers are expanding their offerings to try to get a bigger slice of the same pie,’ Mr Jolley added.
As a multiformat inserting system, the 5000 is a new concept from the company, which can be used for all envelope sizes, and contains an intelligent software system that can adapt the machine’s configurations to suit each job, eliminating down time when a job change is required. Incorporating Kern’s own mailFactory software, the machine is able to control and read the mail pieces as they pass through the system for complete closed loop production.
Guests given the factory tour were shown the store room where every item manufacturered is meticulously stored safely underground
Reinhard Glade from W+D spoke about the role his company’s technology plays in the union with Kern. He said; ‘W+D is in the market of letters and envelope converting, but also has experience in flexo, offset and digital printing processes.
‘Our TIprint 4dl four colour inline digital printing solution works with our TIMOS software to read the pre-printed primary document, print a personalised envelope and pair them together inline, in one pass. All other solutions for four colour outsert printing print at the end of the print/insertion run. Printing onto a full envelope is difficult as the envelope’s shape has changed according to its contents. So the W+D system has found a way to print on the envelope before the documents are inserted. It is a system which is direct marketing driven.’
As well as the wide range of machinery on show, the open house offered an educational programme. Seminars were given by some of the many partners who were in attendance at the open house, such as Bernhard Cantzler from Mondi. He said; ‘More and more applications are moving to digital print and paper plays a huge part in this growth. As inkjet inks are water based the ink needs to dry, which means a decent paper is essential with the speed that inkjet runs at. As always, it is a case of the right paper for the right job and this depends on the application being run.’
Juan Lozano Merino, spoke about the company’s newest operation running from Spain. The Spanish office is dedicated to looking at how the company can expand its offering outside the mailing sector and shred its experiences in his presentation, titled Kern Vision.
New markets include packaging and security printing, but the company has also developed the Data Vision 7000, which can be used in any printing sector.
The Data Vision 7000 is a unit made for quality control, a scanner for printed sheets designed for environments that require a high level of quality control. It is able to scan sheets up to B1 and can be used for all different types of printing processes, including barcodes, OCR, and even Braille.
Direct mail is an established form of marketing and despite the emergence of digital communications should still play an important role in marketing. But do printers know enough about the marketing cycle? Mr Jolley said; ‘It’s not really a matter of whether the printers know enough about marketing. The people that hold the data need to know more about the marketing cycle. Even in just my own personal experience I have had companies send me new customer offers despite the fact I was an existing customer and they should have seen this in their data. This is the key, we can supply the kit to insert and enclose the mail but in a marketing context it is that data which can make it a great campaign or a bad one.’
