Inkjet & Digital Printing
Bishops Printers Takes On Premierships Football Elite With Dominos A-series CIJ Printers
Thursday 22. April 2010 - Two A400s takes Bishops to top of Premiership
When Bishops Printers, one of the largest commercial printers in the South of England were looking for a variable data print solution to meet the requirements of Englands top premiership football clubs, Dominos world-leading A-series continuous ink jet printer provided the perfect answer.
Established over 20 years ago, Bishops Printers based in Portsmouth prides itself in providing innovative, time-critical, quality print solutions for its customers. Therefore, when they were approached by Arsenal Football Club with a specific request to print sequential numbers onto their match programmes, the team at Bishops were keen to tackle the challenge.
The company already had an impressive client list from footballs elite, printing match programmes for Chelsea FC, Portsmouth and Fulham football clubs which demands extremely time-sensitive production to the strictest of deadlines. Late changes to team line-ups, additional amendments to copy coupled with the presentation of large numbers of action imagery drives the need for the fastest possible turnaround without compromising on quality.
Says Nick Murphy, Operations Director at Bishops Printers, “We needed a late-stage print solution to add to our finishing line-up that could manage and print unique numbers on 25,000 finished match programmes, enabling Arsenal FC to run prize draws linked to their programmes during their 19 home games. Our main print equipment supplier, Heidelberg, strongly recommended Dominos A-Series CIJ printers for their ease of integration, and reputation for delivering consistent high quality print codes with minimal intervention.”
The large internal ink reservoirs and unique automatic self-cleaning properties of the print heads in the A-Series allows for greater production output with minimal downtime, and ensures continuous and consistent print quality throughout the run.
Following this recommendation, Bishops Printers purchased two A400 CP printers for its post-press department, installing one into its Heidelberg ST450 six station stitching line, and the second on its T82 Stahl folding line.
“Installation was very straightforward and their compact design meant that they required little additional space on our finishing lines,” adds Nick Murphy. “Apart from simply switching the machines on every day using their SureStart one-button control, and some general day to day cleaning, we never have to worry about these printers. They have run smoothly without any problems since they were installed, which is essential given the strict print deadlines we have to stick to in order to deliver the finished programmes to the stadium in time.”
Since installing the two Domino A-Series, Bishops Printers has been approached by other football clubs to add unique codes and sequential numbers onto their match programmes to also facilitate half-time prize draws and boost programme sales.
“We have been delighted with our investment. Some of our existing customers have already expressed an interest in our capabilities to add unique coding and numbering, as they can see the potential this offers in terms of adding a further marketing and promotional dimension to their printed collateral,” says Mr Murphy. “We too can see how the addition of our A-Series printers can enable us to expand the services we offer both our existing customers as well as giving us an opportunity to develop our own new business potential in the future.”