Neil Handforth (left) and Bob Usher (right) of Apex, seal the reselling deal with Konica Minolta’s regional sales manager Caroline Mannering.

 

After a year as a digital press reseller, Apex Digital Graphics reveals its intention to raise the reputation of digital print colour between printers and their customers.

Best known as the UK agent for Ryobi offset presses, and CTP systems from Screen and ECRM, Apex Digital Graphics now also has more than a year under its belt as a digital printing press reseller through its arrangement with Konica Minolta, which started early in 2013. So far, some 15 production class presses have been sold, and the company believes it is a matter of weeks away from becoming a fully independent reseller, having proved itself sales-wise and through its engineering support expertise. This, for customers, will mean a more direct relationship with Apex Digital Graphics.

It started out on this path with an objective of raising the level of discourse between printers and their clients. Printers would almost apologetically make excuses for digital print, telling their clients that the quality would not match that of offset but if they wanted a quick turnaround, digital was the way to go. A classic trade off, you might say, but Apex managing director Bob Usher believes this had the effect of ‘dumbing down’ discussions of digital printing’s colour quality.

The company’s approach to try to raise this level of discourse has involved pairing the Konica Minolta presses with CGS ORIS ColorTuner software. Mr Usher explained: ‘We produce print work on the litho press and via the ORIS software we tune the image to match it on the digital. There has been a real dumbing down on colour. Printers are saying to their customers: it’s a digital job, you can have it today but it’s different to offset quality because it is digital.

‘Our goal is to make it as close as possible to offset with CGS ORIS ColorTuner, and we sell that as part of the package with the digital presses. It harmonises the two devices very well. No longer do customers have to sell digital colour cheaper. It is very close to offset. You can print 500 digital today and get the balance done on offset later. That was our dream when we started off.’

To smooth out Apex Digital Graphics’ inevitable learning curve with digital print, the company hired a digital sales specialist, Mike Ryan, from Danwood. He has a national role, accompanying Apex’s sales executives and bringing his digital expertise to bear on visits to printers around the country. ‘He is an absolute expert in digital and has taught our sales team and the directors an awful lot about digital,’ Mr Usher conceded.

This is not to say that there were not impressive skills already within the organisation that could be focused anew on the digital market – skills that Mr Usher believes mark Apex out among digital press distributors.

‘There is a segment of suppliers that are used to selling boxes to office environments and CRD, but the commercial print world is a totally different environment. It is the sharpest end of the market. If a machine is down you are losing money.

‘We are not just a box shifter; we have had to install very expensive machinery in the past and make it work for colour. We understand the needs of a commercial printer that is putting digital in, and the variety of jobs they are getting from customers.  We can provide good consultancy to help commercial printers going into digital to get the optimum from a digital device.’

Mr Usher expects digital print to become a bigger part of the business, but the litho and CTP sides are far from dormant. On the CTP side, Mitsubishi Paper Mills’ new DigiPlate VDP polyester platesetter has been an exciting recent addition, taking over from the ECRM DPX. It is a chemistry-free system that can produce both B2 and B3 size plates at up to 20 plates per hour.

Then there is LED UV, which the company is seeing increased interest in. LED-based UV drying on Ryobi presses is certainly not new, having been first unveiled at drupa 2008. Two years later at Ipex, Apex took a number of leads from printers that wanted to print onto plastics and heavy substrates, but only comparatively recently, with the development of more powerful curing units mounted in the delivery of the press, has this market really started to spring open.

All of this technology will be showcased at the next Print Efficiently event in October, which is run by Apex and some of its partners.