At Rural Press and McPhersons Ferag is overcoming OH&S issues by taking the strain out of wire handling
Ferag Australia bindery products have been making an Occupational Health & Safety difference in central Victoria, at Rural Press in Ballarat and McPhersons in Maryborough.Both companies have added a Ferag Wire Lifting Trolley to their binderies and Rural Press has also invested in a Ferag Wire Despooler.
At Rural Press, operations manager Paul Kelly oversees the saddlestitching of supplements in the Ballarat daily, The Courier, and in the Geelong Advertiser, as well as insertions in the Melbourne Trading Post and Stock & Land. Street magazines such as Inpress, Beat and Forte, are all stitched, as are several of the ethnic newspapers printed by Rural.
Kelly says the Ferag Wire Lifting Trolley has taken OH&S a significant step forward at Rural's Ballarat bindery.
In the wrong conditions, the manual handling and movement of wire spools used in saddlestitching can be a hazardous process for an operator. Spools used at Rural Press can weigh up to 90kg and often need to be moved over long distances, then manouevred into awkward spaces, all the time presenting a risk of muscle strain injury.
Rural Press added a Ferag Premium Wire Trolley to its production floor in January this year. The unit offers a simple but effective solution to the problem of manually shifting wire spools to the saddlestitcher.
Using a traditional trolley design, with a lockable and movable coupling unit attached to a hand lever, the trolley allows the operator to lift, shift and deliver a spool of 90kg wire to a despooler or directly to the stitcher without manual intervention at any point.
"Beforehand, the wire spools were rolled onto an ordinary hand trolley and then rolled back off at the stitcher," says Kelly, "but with the 90kg spools we use here, that created OH&S issues. Ferag Australia's wire lifting trolley is a quicker, easier and safer way to transport wire, and it prevents back injuries.
"The whole design of the trolley is simple and straightforward to use, such as the handbrake for better manouevring. The trolley doesn't require any special operator skills that can't be learned quickly."
Rural Press also bought a Ferag Wire Despooler, which eliminates the natural 'caste' of spooled wire. The caste or memory of the spooled wire can limit production as it is fed through the catch fork of a stitcher.
The unit offers straight despooling, allowing a drum to be located several metres away from the actual stitching head, and resulting in few, if any missed stitches.
Says Kelly: "The guides in the unit feed wire into the stitcher in a way that is stable and easy to operate. It stops twisting and tangling, while a brush keeps the wire clean and free of dust, which prevents jams as the wire is fed into the staple heads.
"There is less downtime due to stoppages that result from wear and tear," he says, noting that typical print and bindery runs at Rural Press can be around 200,000 copies.
The Ferag Wire Lifting Trolley and Ferag Wire Despooler are part of a comprehensive OH&S strategy run by Rural's Human Resources department, says Kelly.
At the start and finish of each shift, production staff are involved in 'toolbox meetings', organised by the company's national OH&S officer Bruce Treharne, who looks after work safety at Rural's facilities around Australia.
Work hazards in areas such as manual handling, forklift operation and chemicals are highlighted at each meeting.
Meanwhile, the book printing and finishing division of McPhersons at Maryborough has added a Ferag Wire Lifting Trolley to its bindery operations.
McPhersons' bindery coordinator Adrian Holland lists an array of stitched books, such as newsagents' merchandise - the popular Tsudoku puzzle books and childrens' colouring books - as well as WorkCover booklets, timetables for NSW Rail and banking and finance documentation, that are finished at McPhersons in Maryborough.
"With two saddlestitching machines and up to four wire spools per stitcher, we can have up to 10 or 12 spools in the production area at any time," says Holland. "We may need to change two or three of them in a tight working area.
"Manual handling created issues with occasional reports of back injuries, damage to reels and bottlenecks with moving of our wire spools," he says.
Around 12 months ago, McPhersons in Maryborough invested in a Ferag Wire Lifting Trolley which Ferag Australia bundled in a sale of its premium German-manufactured 0.55mm stitching wire.
"The trolley has tough, durable wheels and is well balanced. Most importantly, an operator doesn't have to be strong to use it," says Holland.
The amount of wire being stitched has increased significantly in recent years, with McPhersons adding a second stitcher. Stitching is now performed in three daily work-shifts for most of the year, he says.
Upgrading from one-up to two-up books means there are now four stitching stations instead of two and input to each machine has increased. Says Holland: "The Ferag Australia Wire Lifting Trolley is a key aspect of our OH&S program."
Ferag Australia Australia's sales executive for Post Press David Kane says the Ferag Wire Lifting Trolley and Ferag Wire Despooler are manufactured to premium quality standards by the same German manufacturer which produces the premium stitching wire that Ferag Australia offers its customers.
He says, "These products help Ferag Australia to build a proactive OH&S partnership with companies like Rural Press Ballarat and McPhersons Maryborough. Ferag, a wholly owned family business, is not just about cutting-edge large-format equipment for the big end of town but is focused on everyday issues like OH&S and making the workplace safer.
"We've built relationships with our clients that are not merely about supplying state-of-the-art equipment.
"Our philosophy is that our customers' problems are our issues, says David Kane. We take health and safety very seriously and we respect companies like Rural Press and McPhersons which have illustrated through their capital equipment investment that that they think the same way."
