Grün Gedruckt opts for second-hand Polar equipment

Sustainability is one of the essential pillars of successful operations for the grün-gedruckt.de media house in Germany, which several years ago was recognized as one of the first in the region with the ‘Blue Angel’ ecolabel certification. 

The company prints all jobs as climate-neutral with certified raw materials. In addition to the printing jobs, the equipment and machinery are also an important starting point for sustainability. For this reason, new acquisitions mostly come from the second-hand market. 

The motivation for the new acquisition was a very strained paper market with cutting work increasingly being carried out in-house due to a lack of suitable formats. A Polar Transomat, also purchased second-hand, offers a physical relief benefitting a severely disabled employee with its higher front table and improved ergonomics. 

‘The Polar N115 XT has replaced an older and smaller Polar cutting machine. We had been looking for a suitable used machine for a long time, and as we do not purchase new pieces of equipment often, finding this cutter was a real highlight for us,’ said Carolin Heck, graphic designer at Grün Gedruckt. ‘Almost every job we do is done with the N115 XT. The pre-cutting of paper formats is particularly important on the machine.’

The equipment supplier decision was guided by the fact that the predecessor machine’s performance was convincing. Therefore, a specific search was made for a used model from the German manufacturer. 

‘Our experience with Polar has been consistently positive. We are delighted with the handling, the quality, and the durability,’ added Heck. 

‘The quality of our machines and the resulting longevity are central to our understanding of sustainability,’ commented Hendrik Kneusels, head of sales and marketing at Polar. ‘Of course, we are also working on making our machines even more environmentally friendly, but ultimately the lifecycle of a product is one of the most important parameters for its carbon footprint. The fact that a machine enriches a print shop after more than 15 years as a ”new addition” is remarkable.’