Gurnee, IL - In the highly competitive tourism business, it’s all about image.  Perhaps this is why Swift Print Communications in St. Louis lives up to its home state’s motto by showing everyone how well they manage print jobs for a variety of tourism clients.  The general commercial printer offers high quality sheetfed printing to national accounts and gets some help in mixing their own ink supply from GFI Innovations, using both the unique Mx6 Ink Formulation Dispenser and MxR10 Vortex mixer.  Installed earlier this year, both devices are living up to their advanced billing.

“So far, our ink mixing and matching has performed as well as we hoped it would.  We had immediate results and began working off our inventory of stored ink,” said Ron Stansbury, a 26-year veteran at Swift Print, the last 14 as pressroom supervisor.  “The GFI machines are very user-friendly and the training was pretty easy.  I was able to get both devices producing for us in less than a couple of hours.”

The third generation owned company was founded in 1912 by John Swift as a letter press shop and later switched to offset lithography.  Today, more than 50 employees produce work that ranges from tourism rack cards and brochures to financial and technical printing, including catalogs, textbooks, yearbooks, newsletters, training manuals and digital and CD ROM printing.  Service oriented, Swift Print produces custom designs, offers a complete digital prepress operation, and has a full bindery with saddle stitching and perfect binding.

With the huge variety of work they push through a Heidelberg 5-color press, Stansbury said the shop had accumulated a sizeable inventory of leftover ink, somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 pounds.  In today’s business environment, that’s how the GFI products are now making a difference and helping Swift Print with its profit margin.

“Space is golden so we are in the process of working off our inventory,” Stansbury said.  “We usually require between 5 and 15 pounds of ink per job, and we do 30 to 40 jobs a week, most of which is 4-color process.  All of our jobs get to press faster now.  There is no more pre-order or waiting around for ink to arrive.  With the Mx6 dispenser and the MxR10 mixer, it eliminates a lot of time out of each job.  Now, we basically take a look at the plate, put it on press and hit the button.”

Stansbury appreciates that both the Mx6 and MxR10 are accurate and easy to use, and have small footprints.  The MxR10 Vortex mixer is just 18-inches wide by 14-inches deep and only 27-inches in height, roughly half the size of the Mx-6 Ink Formulation Dispenser.

“I handle all our inventory and stock and trained the people in our pressroom to mix our own ink.  We use both spot and PMS colors and usually get the mixing done right on the money the first time.  I like the fact that we also have the ability to scan the bar code and get one more pound if we run a bit short.  We market this process as advanced pressroom technology to our customers.  It makes a big difference to them when we can get their work done and out the door sooner than they expected.”

To illustrate the point, Stansbury recalled a recent project that in the past would have certainly resulted in leftover ink.

“We used more than 200 pounds of ink for the job.  Before we invested in the GFI products, I could have been off in my estimate by a longshot.  As it turned out, we only made as much as we needed and wound up with less than a pound remaining when we finished.”

GFI Innovations leads the industry in Ink Formulation Dispensing, including its patented Mx Series technologies.  The company offers a range of dispensing systems and accessories for paste inks, along with advanced software for ink formulation and inventory management.  For more information, contact Bob Wolff with The Drucker Group at 312.867.4960.