Inkjet & Digital Printing

Arian GmbH installs first Jet Press 720 in Europe

Friday 05. April 2013 - FUJIFILM Europe today announces that Arian GmbH, based in Gleisdorf, Austria, is the first company in Europe to install Fujifilm's flagship B2 sheet-fed digital inkjet press, the Jet Press 720. Installed in January 2013, the machine is now in production and set to complement an impressive array of screen and digital printing presses at the company.

Arian GmbH is a family-run business with over 220 employees that has been in operation for over 35 years. It specialises in the development and manufacturing of high quality POP, POS, outdoor advertising and self-adhesive products, including 3D design & development. With a global customer base, the company operates both screen and digital printing presses, with as much emphasis placed on finishing, delivery and logistics as on print production. The site extends to around 21,000 m2, of which 5,000m2 is dedicated to logistics. The company is unique in Europe in operating several five-colour screen printing machines, supplemented by an impressive array of digital printing presses.
Stephan Kollegger, Chief Executive Officer, comments: “As one of the leading companies in the world for screen and digital printing, customer satisfaction is a top priority for us, so we are committed to providing support for our customers in order to make their ideas and visions a reality.”
In line with this vision, the company prides itself on staying ahead of the game by investing in the most recent technologies to enable it to produce customised products for its customers, and the investment in the Jet Press 720 has been built on this ethos. Mr Kollegger continues: “With customer satisfaction such a high priority, we wanted to offer the same kind of service levels on jobs we were outsourcing to offset as our mainstream in house POP and POS work, but this proved impossible. Our ability to turn jobs around quickly on the Jet Press 720 now helps us fulfil this goal.”
With the investment in the Jet Press 720, Arian is now able to offer a high quality print and fulfilment service of three to five days to supplement its main POP and POS offering, bringing all print production now in house. As such, the applications being run on the Jet Press 720 so far include small format POS and posters, together with more traditional brochures and flyers that it offers as an extended service to its current customer base. Mr Kollegger adds: “We can now fulfil every type of job for our POS customers from small to ultra-large format, and as the market trend is for lower run lengths we can now produce small runs of flyers and brochures in house, so the Jet Press 720 is an excellent fit for our business.”
He continues: “The Jet Press 720 also complements the ultra high quality work we produce for some very demanding clients. When we started investigating this type of digital press last year, we concluded that the Jet Press 720 produced the best print quality, something that was critical for us as our customers expect the very best. But we were also impressed by the material handling capabilities of the machine which is one of the most important issues to address.”
Bernd Büchel, Technical Director at Arian, adds: “We anticipate the sweet spot for the Jet Press 720 to be between 200 and 500 sheets, although this may change as we put more print through the machine. We are also very keen to explore the personalisation and versioning that we can now do with the variable data XMF module recently installed, as over 80% of our work is exported and we have many multi-lingual jobs requiring versioning coming through.”
Having taken delivery of the machine in December with the installation taking place in January, Mr Kollegger only has praise for the commitment of the Fujifilm engineers throughout the installation process: “We have a long history with Fujifilm in terms of their screen inks, so we have a good relationship, but despite installing many inkjet printing presses over the last 10 years, we have never seen a company so meticulous in its installation and commissioning process. From the moment the press arrived in boxes to the day the first print run came off the machine, Fujifilm’s approach has been first class, with the installation area kept incredibly clean. There have been inevitable issues to address along the way, but the Fujifilm team has been very supportive throughout the process.”
Asked about the immediate future with the Jet Press 720, Mr Kollegger concluded: “We anticipate building up the volume of work on the machine to two shifts over the spring and summer. We are excited about what the Jet Press 720 brings to our business. We often invest in digital presses and end up using them for many more applications than first anticipated. We expect the same will happen with the Jet Press 720. We look forward to working with Fujifilm during this process.”
The Jet Press 720 is a four colour digital inkjet press capable of printing a B2 sheet in a single-pass, resulting in production speeds of up to 2,700 B2 sheets an hour. It makes use of SAMBATM print-head technology to achieve resolutions of 1,200dpi x 1,200dpi with four variable dot sizes, and is set to raise the bar in terms of the quality that can be achieved with a digital printing system. Significantly, by applying a primer to the printed sheet prior to imaging, the Jet Press can print onto standard offset coated and specified uncoated papers.