PrintingNews.com

New Jersey's Prestige Graphics in Union has been making significant transformations, with regards to the efforts of General Manager Keith Barreiro. Despite the hardships that the printing industry continues to face, the company recently expanded its facilities by opening a new shop in Eatontown.

Prestige Graphics has grown to become a commercial printer with a wide range of print and production services and capabilities. The company uses specific equipment for each job and serves clients' needs while keeping prices competitive. Its clients include high-end automobile manufacturers and credit card companies. "We're trying to attract new clients that want high quality work, and the changes we've been going through are helping us to do that," said Barreiro.
"For the last 27 years, Vice President Ron Dubrow has always been able to make changes as needed. In the past year, we have completely changed the way we run our business. We have also retrained our employees and cross trained some in each department to operate different equipment," he stated. The company has 55 employees who work in the prepress, press, and bindery departments.

Reorganizing the Infrastructure

Changes were made for the new location: Reducing overtime for the 24/6 business by creating three-day work weeks and other shift changes had to be done, as well as changing the company's manufacturing process. "We improved our prep department by purchasing state-of-the-art equipment and servers that can handle larger files, and also having a backup server that is a mirror of the first because our systems can never be down.

"We've changed our backup systems and the way we store our files that are now available online to our Mac operators, instead of going through old style data tape storage," he further explained.

The company has also recently became Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and it doing much of its work on FSC supplied paper.

Prestige has also updated its digital proofing system and increased its quality output by 100 percent. An Afga :Avalon direct-to-plate fully automated system allows improvement of output on plates, which are now automatically in line. Pressroom changes have improved make-ready times and kept each department calibrated, but this was not enough to satisfy all the requirements of a successful transition.

Making Wise Investments

"We purchased a Heidelberg SM 102 eight-color press and aqueous tower, plus a 4/4 Heidelberg perfector with a roll stand. This press will give us the ability to perfect four-color work—two sides with one pass from a roll and sheet at the same time. This is what we need to stay competitive," he commented.