When Hunts People in Print needed a new digital press, it consulted online print forums. These helped it narrow its choice to a Konica Minolta bizhub Press C8000.

Based in Kidlington, just to the north of Oxford, Hunts People in Print is a commercial printing company serving Oxford and its surroundings. First established in the early 1960s as Hunts Lithoprint Ltd, the company has remained up to date in the commercial print market by adopting new technical innovations to meet changing customer requirements. In 2007, it moved into digital printing, headed up by Rich Wickson.

A small Xerox DocuColor was soon joined by an Océ CS650 Pro (a rebadged Konica Minolta bizhub Pro C6501e) and a wide format inkjet. The following year it added ‘People in Print’ to its title to emphasise its customer service. Last November it increased its digital investment with a Konica Minolta bizhub Press C8000, the top digital colour press in its range.

‘It was a great choice for us, and has proved valuable in our service offerings,’ Mr Wickson says. ‘We began with one very basic machine that was little more than an office colour laser printer, but as demand increased for short-run colour digital work it was clear that something faster, more robust with greater throughput and better quality output was required.

Hunts surveyed the current digital system market based on its needs. ‘We have a Komori five colour litho press for big jobs and a Heidelberg Anicolor Speedmaster for shorter run litho colour work, says Mr Wickson. ‘So our colour digital provision had to fit into that existing equipment mix. For that reason we ruled out the very expensive digital colour systems and any web fed systems. That left mid-range systems from four manufacturers and we saw demonstrations of all four systems.’

To help make the decision, Mr Wickson looked at online commercial print forums in the UK and USA. ‘It was obvious from the online chatter that the Konica Minolta system was the best in its class,’ he says. ‘We chose it because of value for money, speed and print quality. It was also the latest technology and featured an air feed mechanism on the paper drawers which I knew would mean reliability on substrate feeding.’

With a large existing investment in offline finishing equipment, Hunts opted for large capacity stacker units rather than online finishing for the new machine. It also chose a Fiery print controller, rather than the alternative Creo Rip option. ‘We were already using Fiery controllers and option was selected, imposition is easy and accurate, we find,’ says Mr Wickson.

Installation and training

He was also impressed by the installation and training provided with the press. ‘They came in to install on a Wednesday and on Thursday afternoon we were up and running live jobs. The training began straight away and was very good with a follow-up session to cover the more in-depth features. The account management has also been good, attentive but not intrusive,’ he says. The new press fits Hunts’ needs for job applications, especially in terms of the print quality provided by the new Simitri HP polymerised toner, that was introduced with the Press C8000 model. ‘We do a lot of high quality colour work for design agencies and the university,’ says Mr Wickson. ‘Thanks to the Simitri HD toner, we can now run jobs that before would have been done with the Heidelberg Anicolor, which has increased our overall output capacity. The tipping point between digital and litho for us is now about 500 sheets. We run most of the digital jobs as perfecting print and the registration is excellent.’

Summing up, Mr Wickson says: ‘We only had three engineering call-outs in three months of operation and we’re running the machine pretty hard. It’s performing better than I’d expected. The speed is fantastic with three times the throughput of the previous system. We are a customer centric and quality conscious print provider, so I’m pleased to say that the quality is also good. I think it’s really closed the gap between litho and digital. All in all it has fully exceeded our expectations.’

What’s a bizhub PRESS C8000?

This is the flagship of Konica Minolta’s sheetfed production colour press range, first shipping the end of 2010. It’s a second generation engine, replacing the successful bizhub Print/Pro C6500 series introduced at Ipex 2006.

This runs SRA3+ sheets at up to 80 A4 pages per minute with a duty cycle of around 500,000 pages per month. It can take paper up to 350 g/m2 thanks to air blowers in the trays. New Simitri HD+ toner was introduced. The print resolution is 1200 x 1200 dpi, with clever processing to improve the appearance of lettering and reverse-outs. The Press C8000 model has a second fuser that helps it to match offset appearance.

Also in the same family are the C6000 and C7000models, which are a little slower and are limited to 300 g/m2. Press models can be supplied with a choice of online finishing including hole punching, folding, stapling, saddle stitching and perfect binding. A typical price for a Press 8000 with stacker would be around £155,000, plus about £40,000 for the Fiery Rip.

Contact: www.konicaminolta.co.uk