Inkjet & Digital Printing

Adverset moves its wide format to make way for commercial digital

Thursday 21. November 2013 - To give its customers an even wider range of product and cost options as well as the potential for personalisation, adverset media solutions in Scarborough is making its debut in digital printing with a Linoprint C 751.

The company offers a branding, design and total production service and is already well equipped with Speedmaster technology for commercial offset jobs and wide format machines for point of sale, banners, pop up stands, display panels, window graphics and personalised wallpaper.
The wide format operation has grown substantially due to new sales generated from a successful stand-alone ecommerce website. This factor, coupled with the need to manage the finishing of extra-large product size configurations, has influenced the decision to expand the facility into a part of the premises which was previously leased out. In turn, that will release an ideal expandable working space for the new digital press and the scope to add a second machine and more dedicated finishing in future.
The new Linoprint C 751 will be delivered by Heidelberg to the factory next month. At the same time Morgana is supplying a Digifold Pro creaser/folder and a Matrix 74 laminator.
“This move into digital will enable us to handle shorter run work more competitively. We are seeing people batch longer run work into shorter quantities,” says John Easby, managing director.
“We can then look and see which technology (litho or digital) is the most cost effective and relevant for each particular job and it will also open up new opportunities for personalisation, variable data and for printing on non-paper substrates. We believe this will take us into new sectors.”
Heidelberg and Xerox were the two short-listed suppliers. Adverset preferred the more robust build of the Linoprint C 751 in addition to the superior quality output (especially on fine tint work). Another factor was the machine’s ability, with a 630mm sheet length, to produce a 6pp A4 related product. The company’s experience with Heidelberg equipment over many years has been very consistent and the investment offers the flexibility of a potential consumables deal in future should the company wish to add to its inline digital finishing portfolio.
“It is well documented that digital inks are more prone to cracking and affecting finishing issues than litho inks, so having a product like the Digifold Pro on-board that will crease as well as fold is almost a pre-requisite,” says John Easby, managing director.
Initially offset operators will kick-start the operation by running the Linoprint C751, bringing their knowledge of print and colour quality to this new technology. Once confidence in the set up and the output quality is established, a dedicated digital printer will be recruited, which should coincide with increased volume through a ‘customer awareness strategy’. The Linoprint C 751 will operate a flexible day shift while the litho operation runs on double days.