For over 130 years, quality and reliability have been the top priorities at this state-of-the-art company, earning the confidence and trust of its longstanding customers:

Ziegler Printing is located in Neckarbischofsheim in the middle of the Neckar-Odenwald Nature Park just 25 kilometers southeast of Heidelberg. It’s not immediately obvious, when you see the new ultra-modern industrial building which the company moved into three years ago, that tradition and decades of experience are an integral part of their success in innovation and trendsetting. The company, today managed by Jo Bloss, CEO, is still family-owned after five generations and boasts forty-three highly motivated and committed employees. Steeped in tradition, knowledge gained over decades is always passed on to the following generations of employees.

There is one ideal to which the company has been committed for several years now and that is sustainability and the environment. Ziegler has received FSC certification, recognizing that most of their printed products are produced on FSC-certified papers, offset as well as digital. The building itself was rated for low CO2 emissions and their customers are offered CO2-compensation certificates used to finance projects promoting renewable energy.

Ziegler recognizes that the fundamental changes taking place in the printing industry offer chances for success and are by no means threats. The transition from print service provider to media producer was made quite some time ago. Future success of the company is ensured by continuous investment in new technologies and equipment. The printing presses are somewhat special. They have all been given names, like ‚Gina‘ – the latest digital press, or the more classical ‚Penelope‘ for one of the offset presses.

Their service offering ranges from traditional print media (catalogs, leaflets, inserts etc.), through the production of labels, scratch cards and punched cards to printing and distribution of direct mail pieces. The company’s clients are located throughout Germany. The majority are agencies and well-known companies in trade and industry who all have high demands regarding quality and on-time delivery.

ALWAYS A STEP AHEAD

That Ziegler is at the very highest level of quality printing is obvious by their choice of offset presses  a four-color Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 and a six-color Speedmaster CD 102 for substrates up to 1 mm thick, both with coating units and Prinect Image Control.

In 2008, Ziegler decided to get more involved in digital printing after an in-depth market and customer analysis and first experiences with a Xerox DocuColor 6060. Increased production capacity using the best available technology for pre-prints was the main consideration so quality needed to be high. After extensive testing the decision was made for a Xerox iGen3 based on print quality, ease of operation and a larger format compared to other machines on the market. Another factor was a look-and-feel similar to offset. Jo Bloss comments: „Contrary to many other companies, digital printing for us is only a part of our overall range of services, but it is a very important one. It allows us to offer our customers a full service from single copy to fully personalized complex mailings. We produce very high quality products on our offset presses, so when we began to consider investing into digital printing, it was absolutely clear that it had to fulfill the same quality criteria to be able to run in mixed production. For example, advance copies, smaller repeat orders or short-run language versions are printed digitally, with the main print run in traditional offset. Naturally, customers expect identical results, irrespective of the printing process.

Consistent quality over time always requires standardization. The majority of our production is based on ISO Coated V2, along with the job data. It is essential that this data produces identical results.“

When viewed on its own, the results from the iGen3 were quite acceptable but they showed noticeable differences in color when compared to offset printing. On their existing ink jet proofing system almost all proofs produced are ISO-compliant; so critical customer proofs for digital had to be printed directly on the iGen3 and to match these preprinted “proofs” during the final print run was not easy, particularly if several days had passed between preliminary and final printing.

A lot of time and material was wasted in setting up each job for digital printing. Make-ready time was significantly higher than expected as different stocks, ranging from 90 to over 300 g/sqm, are used on the press and they all required an individual profile needing the skills of a color specialist.