Jonny Sewell from GPS with the new Xerox press.
GPS Colour Graphics in Belfast has moved into digital printing, spending £240,000 on a Xerox Colour 1000 sheet fed press with EFI workflow software and Plockmatic inline booklet maker.
The press is designed to meet the growing demand for complex, short run print jobs, and is configured to produce high quality booklets and one-to-one documents on a wide variety of paper stocks. This follows a substantial financial investment by GPS of £2.2m to expand its lithographic offering last year.
The company was founded 215 years ago and this year is the 100th anniversary of its incorporation, said it has entered digital print in order to diversify its business and enter the colour print on demand market, with the aim of becoming a one-stop shop for its customers’ printing requirements. Marking the centenary, GPS has also unveiled a new corporate identity and website as well as launching its own web-to-print service called PrintStore, which allows customers to submit and print jobs online.
‘This is our first significant move into digital printing and after assessing a range of options we concluded that Xerox provided the best fit technology to suit our customers’ needs,’ said Ian McCurry, managing director of GPS. ‘We are now in a position to add to the high quality services we offer and provide additional value to our customers, as well as competing for a much wider range of business.
‘Although we are Northern Ireland’s second biggest commercial printing company, until recently we have exclusively had a litho print offering. However, with the needs of customers changing all the time, now felt like the right moment to invest in this technology. The Colour 1000 press not only allows us to take on more work, but to also produce high quality ISO Colour 12647 proofs, which is vital for the continued success of our expanding litho business. We are excited that we are the only commercial printing company in Northern Ireland to be in a position to offer such a complete litho and digital service.’
The company is using its digital press to serve its existing customer base and to expand into new markets. It is now producing variable data and short run print jobs, work that was previously turned away or outsourced. It is producing a range of material that includes the usual leaflets, posters, invitations and business cards that you would expect but has already carved out a niche in large multipage saddlestitched, wire-o and perfect bound books for a range of customers that include financial services and pharmaceutical sectors, design agencies, and the public sector.
The Colour 1000 Press prints 2400 x 2400 dpi with low-melt Emulsion Aggregation (EA) Dry Ink, which is said to deliver an ‘offset-like’ finish. EA Dry ink also requires less energy to manufacture than conventional toners.
Contact: www.gpscolour.co.uk/digital and www.xerox.co.uk
