Mercury Print Productions drives growth in book printing with the KODAK PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press

Mercury Print Productions, based in Rochester, NY, USA, has always been an early adopter of innovation, allowing them to improve the productivity, quality and cost efficiency of print. Founded in 1969, the company was active as a commercial printer for several decades before turning its focus to the production of books for the educational sector around 15 years ago. Today, the educational market accounts for almost 80 percent of Mercury's sales.

A key investment was the purchase of a KODAK PROSPER 5000XL Press in July 2011, which was joined by further PROSPER Presses in subsequent years. With the inkjet web presses from Kodak, Mercury was able to innovate and achieve tremendous growth in the educational books business, which, according to the company's CEO John Place had been virtually devoid of digital printing products until then.

Mercury currently employs 220 people and has sheetfed and web offset, sheetfed and web inkjet, sheetfed toner and wide format inkjet facilities. In the fall of 2023, the company expanded its inkjet production printing capacity with the world's first installed KODAK PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press, the fastest inkjet web press currently available on the market.

PRINERGY being able to produce files that can go out onto [inkjet, toner, and offset] platforms without having to be reprocessed is huge,” says Director of Digital Workflows, Felix Medero. “It's really automation that's changing the focus of that operator managing the work versus doing the work. We have been able to increase output in prepress anywhere from 40 to 50% using the RBA without having to increase our personnel.

John Place, Mercury's CEO, explains why the PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press came at exactly the right time for the company: "The PROSPER 7000 Turbo stood out for its exceptional speed which lets us go for longer runs. Thanks to this high productivity, we can meet the growing demands of customers in terms of shorter lead times and on-demand manufacturing. Another important factor was PROSPER 7000 Turbo's ability to print on gloss, dull or matte-coated stocks in high quality. This enables us to produce more sophisticated textbooks and trade books and thus win additional work." Mercury prints both standard offset papers without priming and inkjet-treated stock in a wide weight range on the PROSPER 7000 Turbo. If no change of the paper stock is required, a job changeover on the press is a matter of minutes.

Utilizing KODAK Stream Continuous Inkjet Technology and KODAK EKTACOLOR Inks, the PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press offers printing speeds of up to 410 mpm (1,345 fpm) and a throughput of up to 5,523 A4 or U.S. letter pages per minute. Thanks to its maximum web width of 648 mm (25.5 in) and print width of 621 mm (24.4 in), it can print A4 textbook pages in 3-up (3 copies side by side). The PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press offers three optimized print modes – Quality, Performance and Turbo – which allow easy adjustment of print speed and quality to the requirements of each job, always ensuring maximum production efficiency. Mercury currently runs around 90 percent of print jobs in Turbo Mode and 10 percent in Quality Mode. As higher-quality trade jobs are on the rise, Mercury can run jobs at various resolutions to fit their business needs.

Today, Mercury operates two PROSPER 5000 Presses in addition to the PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press. All of them run 24/7, produce from roll-to-roll and are supervised by one operator per shift. The printed rolls are processed on sheeting lines with the resulting paper stacks being fed into normal print finishing and bookbinding.

The PROSPER 7000 Turbo has significantly boosted Mercury’s efficiency and productivity, allowing them to be more cost-effective and handle a broader range of job quantities. Previously, for a typical 600-page job on the PROSPER 5000, production would be limited to 1,500 to 2,000 copies. However, with the PROSPER 7000 Turbo, they can now produce up to 4,000 to 5,000 copies. This advancement has also enabled Mercury to pursue new business opportunities where we were not as competitive before, leading to substantial growth in volume.

Place is enthusiastic about the productivity of the PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press. "The big question for us is always how many impressions we can get out of the machine in one day. We recently achieved 4.5 million pages within 24 hours on our PROSPER 7000 Turbo. That was a great milestone. And the largest single job we've printed on the machine to date was 1.4 million pages." With its impressive productivity and enhanced substrate versatility, the PROSPER 7000 Turbo Press is truly a game changer for Mercury. Its incredible speed allows them to run jobs on uncoated paper at over 1,000 fpm, necessitating a new paper roll every 15 to 20 minutes.

Mercury's leadership team is very satisfied with the operational reliability of the PROSPER Presses. When it comes to support, Kodak excels with their exceptional service team. Mercury values the impeccable service and reliability provided by Kodak, ensuring minimal press downtime and unparalleled assistance whenever needed.

Mercury Print Productions has always been at the forefront of its key business areas through continued investment in Kodak digital and offset technology and is prospering as a result. Considering the rapidly changing marketplace, John Place is certain where the greatest business opportunity in printing lies in the future, "We believe that inkjet is where the growth is for Mercury."

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