Comment
Beyond the upfront cost: choosing the right press
By Rob Brown, sales & marketing director, Edale
he price of a press is easy to compare. It sits clearly in the quotation and often becomes the number that dominates the buying decision. The cost that matters most, however, is the cost of producing saleable output. That cost only becomes visible in production, as setup demands, material waste, operator input and downtime accumulate across the machine’s working life.
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A lower-priced press can be the right choice. Where the application is straightforward, production is predictable and the converter has suitable technical resources, it may provide a commercially sound route into new capacity. The risk comes when the purchase price is treated as the main measure of value and the cost of running the press under real production pressure is underestimated.
That makes the buying decision less a question of headline price and more a question of how reliably and economically the press can turn time, substrate and labour into finished, saleable work.
PRICE IS ONLY THE OPENING NUMBER Converters now handle greater job variation, while customers expect shorter runs and faster turnaround without any loss of consistency. Press economics are therefore shaped as much by what happens between jobs as by performance at full speed.
The commercial impact of those variables is
measurable. In one label-production example, makeready times were reduced by 30 per cent, setup waste by 25 per cent and comparable job sets completed 40 per cent faster. Those gains matter because they affect the cost of each saleable metre produced, not just the speed or specification of the press.
A machine may have an attractive capital price but need longer makereadies or more operator intervention. It may use additional substrate before colour and register settle. Changeovers that appeared manageable during a demonstration can become a constraint when several jobs are waiting. For example, if a lower-cost press adds 15 minutes to four daily changeovers, that amounts to 250 hours of additional changeover time across 250 production days. If each changeover also uses 50 metres of additional substrate before saleable output begins, the annual waste reaches 50,000 metres. That is material bought, handled and run through the press without ever creating a saleable product. The figures are hypothetical, but the principle is practical. A procurement saving can be absorbed gradually by lost production hours, avoidable waste and work that should have been available to sell.
10
September 2026
www.convertermag.com
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