Update 6th March 2025: Michael Bates joins GMH UV
Industry veteran strengthens GEW’s sheetfed distributor for North America
Michael Bates has joined GMH UV LLC, who are GEW’s sheetfed distributor for North America, as a partner to Grieg Heimbuch. Bates will manage sheetfed offset and wide web offset (>38”) business in Western USA and Mexico, whilst Heimbuch manages the Midwest, Eastern USA and Canada.
Bates has served the printing industry for over 40 years. He spent six years as a Pressman Printer, followed by 17 years in Sales at Heidelberg USA. He also gained subsequent experience as a Press Demonstrator and Press Salesman, including two years with KBA. Latterly, Bates has been is Sales for AMS/Baldwin, for over 15 years.
Based in the Midwest, GMH UV is a dedicated partner and distributor of the GEW UV product line for the sheetfed industry in North America, and provides full sales coverage throughout the territory. The company is supported by a multimillion dollar parts inventory and a large and experienced service team at GEW Inc in Ohio. All service and spare parts are delivered through GEW’s established infrastructure, while GMH UV focuses on sales and business development.
Bates comments on his new appointment: “I am delighted to work with Grieg once again. It’s a very exciting prospect and the opportunities are huge. Grieg has done an amazing job in building the business to date, but its great success means that more resource is urgently needed, particularly in the West.
“Help is now at hand and I am really looking forward to getting out there to meet customers old and new. We have fantastic products to market, products that are already dominating sheetfed UV curing in the US. By joining forces in this way, we can be sure to increase GEW’s presence in the market, including that in Canada and Mexico.”
Michael’s details can be found here.
Original article – July 2022
With immediate effect, GEW will be represented for its sheetfed offset and wide web offset (>38″) business across the USA, Canada and Mexico, by GMH UV LLC.
Based in the Midwest, GMH UV is headed up by industry stalwart Grieg M. Heimbuch. A life-long Graphic Arts veteran, Heimbuch has spent the past 40 years in equipment sales, and has experienced the ups and downs of equipment companies placing their needs before the printers who purchase their equipment. After spending the last six years selling another manufacturer’s UV equipment into the industry, Heimbuch states his fresh determination to now focus on customers’ satisfaction and profitability. His ‘Customer-First Focus’ is already proving to be a breath of fresh air, delivering success and profits to customers.
GMH UV is now a dedicated partner and distributor of the GEW UV product line for the sheetfed industry in North America, and will provide full sales coverage throughout the territory. The company will be supported by a multimillion dollar parts inventory and a large and experienced service team already in place at GEW Inc in Ohio. Together they are ready to meet all of their customer’s reliability needs, focused on keeping printers up and running excellent UV & LED product. All service and spare parts will continue to be delivered through GEW’s established infrastructure, while GMH UV will fully focus on sales and business development.
GMH UV is a company dedicated to bringing the best UV and LED equipment to the North American sheetfed industry. Grieg Heimbuch had been in search of a suitable supply partner for some time and was excited to discover the business opportunity with GEW. He explains: “GEW’s sheetfed UV and LED products exceed the quality and reliability requirements that GMH UV has set as a priority. An exact meeting of power, quality, and price makes GEW’s UV equipment perfectly suited to deliver to GMH UV’s high-performance, high-volume printing market that represent how UV Sheetfed printing has matured over the past decade.”
Heimbuch has surrounded GMH UV with experts in every aspect of UV curing and printing, creating a highly capable team to provide the most state-of-the-industry process and product support. GMH UV has a unique ‘on the floor’ service format that will eliminate the current ‘call and wait while down’ customer service support so notorious in existing equipment supply schemes.
This drive for ultimate reliability and productivity is further supported by GEW’s Remote Monitoring Service. Robert Rae, Managing Director of Sales at GEW, explains: “All new GEW UV systems are continuously monitored over the internet and this enables encrypted system performance data to be sent live to GEW, to ensure the fastest and most precise service response available. The full service history of every lamp is recorded and viewable by GEW engineers in the USA, including all parameters, faults and operator commands. A preventative maintenance program will recommend software or hardware updates and can highlight and correct out-of-tolerance parameters before any issue arises on site.”
Rae goes on to explain the background to this latest move in GEW’s sales strategy for North America: “In the past year, the sales organisation at GEW Inc has undergone a significant restructuring. We have an excellent product line-up across our narrow web, sheetfed and wide web printing and coating markets, and a service organisation with an enviable reputation. However, we had to find a solution to grow into the expanding sheetfed packaging market without losing focus on our core markets in narrow web printing. This exciting partnership with GMH allows us to do just that with GEW Inc maintaining its historical focus and GMH spearheading sheetfed and wide web offset.”
With GMH UV and GEW, Heimbuch is committed to bringing the best possible world of UV and LED to sheetfed printers across North America. He comments: “GEW not only brings the experience and commitment of the largest graphic arts UV company in the world to the North American market, they have partnered with GMH UV to meet and exceed the production needs of our customers. I cannot be more thrilled to represent GEW and help to improve the way printers are worked with in the North American market.”
Robert Rae concludes: “We are very confident that the sales acumen and industry expertise of GMH UV partnered with high quality UV and LED products and services from GEW will be a breath of fresh air for a sheetfed offset market bereft of new options.”
