S akurai Graphic Systems (SGS) which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, belongs to a small and perhaps ever-shrinking club in the printing and graphic communications industry: it remains a family business in a sea of manufacturers owned either publicly by shareholders or private equity.
This, says Sakurai president, Ryuta Sakurai, gives his company a tremendous advantage against its competition.
Sakurai, who has lived and worked in the United States (for IBM), is not your typical head honcho of a press manufacturing company. Rather, he has come into the industry with fresh insights into the way industrial manufacturing businesses should be run and how they can best satisfy their customers - and make them profitable.
Ryuta Sakurai's father and chairman of the board at SGS, Yoshikuni Sakurai was just 13 years old when the company was established in 1946. He worked in the factory after school as the parts boy.
Both father and son are seasoned travellers who enjoy meeting and spending time with users of their presses. This closeness to market means that their presses are developed with customers and their practical needs in mind.
The Sakurai duo is a formidable combination: father, Yoshikuni is respected, even revered in engineering circles as an innovator when it comes to printing press design and construction, whilst son, Ryuta, has brought into the business management and marketing skills from his stint with IBM.
The company's independence from shareholders, equity partners and other vested interests brings with it the advantage that new press concepts can be brought to market quickly. Sakurai like all good businesses exists to make a profit, but earnings are reinvested into the business to develop and build even better machines for customers.
The younger Sakurai speaks with pride about spending much of his time with his customers, the end result being valuable mechanical and marketing intelligence being fed back to engineers at the highly automated Sakurai factory in Gifu. Gifu City is located almost in the centre of Japan, approximately 250km west of Tokyo, 140km east of Osaka, and 30km north of Nagoya. There, 300 staff work in an ultra modern environment on which Sakurai has made his own mark in many areas.
He is particularly proud of the installation of solar panelling on the factory which reduces the amount of electricity the company draws from Japan's power grid. Sakurai would like to do more for the environment, and he surely will but he believes that this is an important first step for his company. Expansion of the inital solar power plant is already on the drawing board.
One of Sakurai's next environmentally-motivated steps will likely be the introduction of a waterless offset press. Whilst there's no shortage of water in Japan, water-saving is less the issue in the adoption of waterless offset printing than the attainment of higher output quality which is much in demand in quality-conscious Japan.
Whilst some competitors have moved some of their manufacturing offshore to China, Sakurai has had no reason to do so, maintaining tight control in Japan of all components manufactured for its presses. The company has also established subsidiaries to distribute its solutions in both the US and the UK.
Sakurai's equipment line-up is somewhat unique in the market in that, in addition to offset presses, some 30 per cent of its factory output is of screen printing equipment (of the cylinder variety) - a market in which Sakurai has a 75 per cent share.
Screen printing is an extremely flexible and versatile technology and used in a wide variety of manufacturing industries. It may even offer profitable opportunities for savvy offset printers looking for a new market niche.
Sakurai Graphic Systems is also looking for new niche opportunities, and in April this year, an OEM licensing agreement was signed with UV dryer manufacturer, Natgraph (UK), under which free-standing models 90 and 110 will be manufactured in Japan under the Sakurai label for sale everywhere except EU countries.
Representing Sakurai Graphic Systems in Australia, Pressnet's Charlie Scandrett is passionate about the benefits of his principal's technologies.
"In the shakey Japanese archipelago, earthquakes move the ground about 200 times a year, so strong frames and bases are essential on printing presses.
"Heavy vibration-reducing construction using tempered SG cast iron is an integral part of Sakurai press manufacture," Scandrett enthuses.
"Hardened and precision-ground gears on Sakurai presses are preserved by high-volume elastohydrodynamic flood lubrication. Sakurai has done even more, with diamond-coating and needle roller bearings on grippers.
"However, the new generation of Sakurai machines has also solved many of the old engineering bugbears of the past: problems with electronics, ink keys and makereadies.
"PLC (programable logic controller) and PC control has replaced the old technology of PCBs ( printed circuit boards), resulting in around 300 per cent greater electronic reliability.
"Strong lever-and-fulcrum ink keys have zero backlash: these new technology keys zero themselves automatically every time the press is turned on.
"QSS (Quick Standby System) is Sakurai's automatic makeready programme. With MTD autodensity control and the CIP4 compatibility of the Sakurai Press Tower, Sakurai has a very powerful, state-of-the-art suite of makeready software controls," adds Scandrett.
"It it is a mix of the old engineering principles of heavy, precision construction, and high volume lubrication, and the new technologies of reliable and robust electronic control that make Sakurai a unique manufacturer.
"Many world press manufacturers have built soundly-engineered presses in the past, but fallen by the way because they could not adapt to technological change and continually redesign their product. In the final analysis it is people who make companies successful.
"The family culture of the Sakurai Graphic Systems company nurtures employees with both the old style Japanese qualities of corporate loyalty, and with inovative attitudes to traditional engineering problems," explains Scandrett.
Scandrett recalls this unique culture encapsulated in a single incident at the Gifu factory. He was taught the Sakurai electronic press control system by Gotoh-san, a Sakurai employee with 40 years company service.
"The electronic age was in its infancy in 1966 and Sakurai were building cylinder letterpresses then ... but that was another generation," Scandrett remembers fondly.
