Jeff Oliver Print in Whangarei installed a new Horizon 566FKT cross folder in September 2007. The installation has meant a significant change in the way folding is handled in the far North and is ensuring that more jobs are able to be finished locally without the need to be sent to Auckland.

For Jeff Oliver Print, the new folder has meant a significant increase in productivity and the ability to quote competitively on a range of jobs that would previously have been uneconomic.

“Previously, when we got a request for a complicated folding job, we would have to send it to Auckland, as would all the other printers in Northland,” says Jeff Oliver. “We identified that there would be major benefits in putting in a folder that allowed us to keep that work in house, and we have been proven correct.”

Oliver did not choose Horizon by default, however. He travelled to the Printex show in Sydney earlier this year to look at folders, and said that the Horizon 566FKT was the one that really captured his interest. In addition, Oliver says he has a great deal of trust in Horizon distributors AM International, built up over many years dealing with the company.

The folder is the first in the world with a wireless remote control. Oliver says that the company hasn’t yet made full use of the remote, but have certainly found times when it has come in handy.

One of the other major benefits of the Horizon 566FKT is that it is fully automated with only one roller gap setting caliper, meaning that the machine automatically sets all the rollers throughout the machine when a sheet is fed into the first roller. So, whereas on their old folder, Jeff Oliver Print’s operators had to set every roller individuually, now this operation is done in the blink of an eye.

“There is effectively no makeready at all,” Oliver says. “It has made a big difference to our productivity.

“We are now able to produce big jobs much faster – 30,000 an hour as opposed to 10,000 an hour before – and the quality is much better as well. The new folder produces nice, square, accurate folds, although obviously the operator is still important.”

Oliver says the company was recently able to quote on a job that involved a complicated seven panel concertina fold that no other company in Northland could do in-house

“The Horizon allowed us to quote far better than we ever could before. To send it to Auckland for folding would incur hundreds of dollars in freight, a delay in delivery, and the cost of the folding itself. As a result, we were really the only ones in the game.

“We are certainly getting more work because of it, and we are providing lots more options for customers around Northland.”