Loading

„QUALITY MUST ALWAYS PAY OFF.“

Kemna Druck Kamen, Germany, is often one step ahead of the latest state of the art - as it is the case with the Horizon StitchLiner Mark III.

Nowadays, high-performance machines enable printing products to be produced in consistently high quality. From Kemna Druck Kamen's point of view, the cost-effectiveness of every job is increasingly becoming the decisive factor. In finishing, the Westphalian family business relies on modern booklet production with the Horizon StitchLiner Mark III.

Labels on rolls or sheets, finishing and vehicle lettering, interior design, personalized brochures, warehouse signs and web design: according to the portfolio, Kemna Druck Kamen is not necessarily a typical print shop. However, the range is fully in line with the advertising slogan that company founder Karl Kemna used in 1971: "We print just about everything except money!“

Stay flexible, try something new

Success has long since confirmed the principle, and Kemna Druck has confidently removed the words "pretty much" from the slogan. Always keeping your ear close to the customer, remaining flexible and trying out new things: Over the past decades, the company has reinvented itself time and again and has grown steadily despite all the crises. Kemna did not regard the rapid transition from offset to digital printing as an existential threat, but rather as a stroke of luck: "From a business management point of view, the classic printing processes were no longer responsible," recalls Sabine Kemna-Heckmann, daughter of the company founder, master printer and managing director of kemna druck kamen GmbH for more than 20 years. The highlight in the printing production machinery today is an HP Indigo 12000 Digital Press in 75 cm format.

First and foremost, the use of state-of-the-art technology serves the purpose of being able to supply high-quality products profitably. In addition, Kemna is constantly on the lookout for ways to expand its portfolio beyond traditional print products - not even family holidays remain unaffected: "During a trip to the USA in the 1980s, we became aware of self-adhesive vinyl films for the production of vehicle lettering," reports Sabine Kemna-Heckmann. "This was not yet known in Germany at the time, so we immediately looked for suppliers and soon thereafter started production in Kamen. The "holiday souvenir" has meanwhile become an important mainstay, Kemna equips the vehicle fleets of numerous companies with printed films of all types and sizes.

Only what pays off is printed

Kemna prints and envelopes advertising letters and invoices for municipal utilities (Sabine Kemna-Heckmann: "There is nothing we cannot envelope"), Kemna prints any motif on acrylic, glass, wood or Dibond, on room dividers, acoustic walls or LED illuminated displays, Kemna prints labels in all colours and sizes. Even if it doesn't look like it at first glance, the portfolio still follows a clear line: Kemna prints on and prints "everything" - but only if it pays off. The team around managing director Kemna-Heckmann thus consistently follows the principles that company founder Karl Kemna had conceived almost half a century ago: absolute adherence to delivery dates, highest quality at fair prices, friendly treatment of the customer, always reachable and competent contact persons.

Since Kemna Druck was founded in 1971 as a garage business, the focus on cost-effectiveness and flexibility in the design of the product range has proven itself throughout. Today, the company has over 2,000 m² of production space in modern premises and state-of-the-art machinery. The location in an industrial estate near the Kamener Kreuz makes logistical processes easier. Corporate responsibility lies in the hands of family members whose professional training ranges from printer to business administrator. Major investments are not made by the management alone, but are first discussed in the family council.

In order to maintain the principle of cost-effectiveness, unprofitable orders are sometimes split: printing 20,000 packages in color and personalizing them individually is too expensive at Kemna via digital printing. On the other hand, it pays off to have the sheets produced by another print shop using offset instead and then personalize them on your own digital press. At Kemna Druck, with a total of 35 employees (ten family members included), the concept of creativity is interpreted far beyond the art of printing.

Restructured: Finishing processes

As good as Kemna Druck has succeeded over the years and decades in successfully adapting to changing market and competitive conditions, one development was inevitable: "In the past we almost only dealt with large jobs that were gradually processed over several days or even weeks," says Sabine Kemna-Heckmann. "Today we have to handle 50 to 60 smaller jobs every day, and all this under great time pressure. The change mainly affected finishing. The ratio of ever shorter runs to the makeready times required for each job, which remained unchanged, caused any profitability to melt away. At the same time, the high efficiency of the newly acquired HP Indigo 12000 led to a production backlog in brochure processing: the saddle stitchers used to date could hardly keep pace with the large number of different jobs due to the makeready times required.

To solve the dilemma, Kemna Druck decided in 2017 to invest in a Horizon StitchLiner Mark III. The system had just been launched, is a saddle stitcher and gathering machine in one and is geared towards variable production of saddle stitched brochures. To ensure that the workflow from digital printing to finishing runs as smoothly as possible, the system was expanded to include the fully automatic high-speed HOF-400 feeder. The integrated mark reading enables variable-page production without manual intervention: all settings are made automatically and without loss of speed during production. In addition, an integrated CF-400 cover feeder takes care of inserting covers or inserts as required.

To date, Kemna Druck had had no experience with Horizon systems, but trusted the recommendations of friendly companies and was convinced by the presentation in the Quickborn showroom. The decisive factors in the end were the extremely short makeready times and the high degree of automation of the machine as well as the perfect interaction with the HP Indigo 12000. Kemna Druck uses the StitchLiner Mark III to process a wide variety of brochures and, above all, assembly and operating instructions, with runs ranging from a few dozen to a few thousand copies. The StitchLiner Mark III achieves up to 6,000 cycles per hour in A4 format and up to 50 sheets or up to 200 pages can be produced using 80-gram paper. "Since we started using the press," says Managing Director Kemna-Heckmann, "we have the profitability firmly under control again.


Add/View comments for this article →
0 Comments
user

Wed March 13th

Trends in packaging con...

4 trends are emerging in 2024: AI, Sustainability, Automation and Talent.

Fri March 8th

Financing

Let's take a deep dive into financing and our very own CEO, Henrik Klem Lassen, who has a Master's Degree in Economics.

Mon March 4th

Hiflow solutions releas...

HiFlow Solutions releases free APP with packaging & imposition for estimators.

Thu February 29th

Printvis announces inte...

PrintVis, the business management MIS/ERP for the printing industry, announces its integration with LoyaltyLoop

Wed February 21st

Will you pay for ai-gen...

With AI, ChatGPT and Language Models it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate human-made from AI - does AI content have value?

Thu February 15th

How to get the most out...

You bought a system a while ago, how do you know you are getting your money's worth?

Wed February 14th

Designnbuy launches des...

Supercharge Your Web-to-Print Business with Unprecedented Personalization, Design Flexibility, and Efficiency

Sun February 11th

Graphic village on the ...

The recent Printing Impressions Top 300 has been an exciting study of how we see value in our industry.

Tue February 6th

Designo v1.8: revolutio...

Join Design’N’Buy for a FREE webinar and discover how their revolutionary technology DesignO V1.8 can transform your print business!

Fri January 19th

Ray stasieczko is a thr...

Keep up the good work, and accept that a stronger end-of-the-day-with-Ray will challenge you on many levels