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Over 80 years of history
The company has changed its name, its products and even its address, but it has never stopped working with paper. Here is how it happened.
From artel to printing house
Not even our longest-serving staff remember the exact founding date: the company went through several mergers and changes of name. But we do know the main milestones.
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The beginning
An artel and lithography
The company started out as an artel, a workers’ cooperative. Even then it printed by lithography — from stone, using a technique known today perhaps only to historians of printing.
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Blank paper goods factory
Notepads, notebooks, exercise books
“Blank” goods are products without print. Ruling machines turned out exercise books that were shipped by the wagonload and container-load all over the Soviet Union.
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Merger
Blank paper goods and art products factory
The merger with an art products factory brought new workshops. Artists painted copies of paintings, which were then mounted in moulded picture frames, and at first the factory made its own board by hand.
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For children
Toy blocks, games and books with movable pictures
The factory made wooden picture blocks and board games, with the playing pieces and counters moulded in plastic in its own workshop. More than 40 years ago we were among the first to produce books with movable pictures: we die-cut them on an automatic press and assembled them by hand.
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In-house technology
From film welding to printing plates
In the high-frequency welding shop, plastic film was welded into notebook covers and even three-dimensional boxes for the Kharkiv razor factory. For many years we made our own printing plates.
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Over 30 years ago
Printing to order
When the market changed, the company shifted its focus to orders from publishers. The experimental workshop prepared the first mock-ups of each edition, the publishers approved them, and then the print runs followed.
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Recent decades
A printing house for publishers on Selianska Street
Children’s books, booklets, magazines and books for publishers: Ranok Publishing, ESHKO (a correspondence language school), Svitlofor and others. In our best months, up to 100,000 children’s books.
Equipment
Printing, binding and finishing — all under one roof. We order offset printing plates from a specialist firm.
How we approach our work
Quality is checked by people
Printed sheet, trimming, lamination, finished book — every stage has its own person in charge. As far as the client is concerned, the equipment is never to blame.
Deadlines are part of the contract
Publishers deliver children’s books to retail chains that impose penalties for late delivery. So when we give you a deadline, we meet it.
An accurate quote
Every specification, down to the paper weight, is written into the contract. No inflated prices and no unpleasant surprises along the way.