KENNESAW, Ga. – March 18, 2008 –Independence Press, founded in 1948 and located in Thorofare, N.J., installed a 6-color Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 press with coater in November and realized a 50 percent productivity increase thanks to the new equipment. "We looked at all the competition out there – all the presses in that class," said Mike Henry, vice president of manufacturing.

"After a lot of evaluation, we concluded the Heidelberg was the best press for us. We wanted to find out if the XL 105 truly ran at 18,000 sph, and we found that to be true." Independence Press, located just across Delaware River from Philadelphia, is a general commercial shop with 50 employees specializing in direct mail printing, catalogs and annual reports. As such, it runs a variety of different stocks and needs to maintain high quality with fast turnaround times.

"We must make every deadline," Henry said. "It's important not to miss any today. After the initial training, we were right out of the gate at 18,000 sheets per hour. We run every job at that speed. It's really increased our capacity and our ability to run jobs we simply couldn't run before. With our older style presses we weren't able to do heavy board, but now we can."

In addition to the new XL 105, the shop runs two Speedmaster SM 102 presses from Heidelberg and a POLAR 137 XT cutter. Independence uses Heidelberg Perfect Dot Blankets on all its presses. "I can't say enough about the Heidelberg team lead by Jon Rasmussen from Heidelberg sales. His years of diligence and perseverance paid off. Jon wasn't trying to push the XL 105 on us. He wanted us to buy the right press line for our needs. We saw that and it really made us feel comfortable throughout the process."

The shop's clients have also been impressed with the new Heidelberg equipment. "The feedback from our customers has been really positive," Henry said. "People just want to see it run. They can't believe not only the quantity but also the quality."