Duplo showcased its latest technology at its annual London Calling open house on 12 February. Among the visitors was Paragon Service Point, which has invested £500,000 in new finishing equipment across its 22 UK branches, including a DuSense sensory coater and Komfi 52 laminator at its Domingo Street, London site.

‘We have invested £4 million over the last three years and we are well placed to service our growing customer base,’ said Paragon’s operations director Mark Pearson. ‘Our growth strategy is working and this investment with Duplo will help us further increase sales within Paragon Service Point in 2019. It is important we have the right supply partners and people in our business to drive at the speed we’re growing. We see Duplo as a strategic partner in helping us drive technology and efficiency to add value for our customers and Duplo have shown great commitment to help us make this investment.’

A variety of Duplo multi-finishers, booklet-makers, creasers and folders will be installed at the chain’s sites over the coming weeks.

Duplo demonstrated its complete portfolio at its Surrey showroom, including new developments  such as workflow integration between the imposition software in EFI Fiery DFEs and Duplo DC646 and DC746 slitter/cutter/creaser units and also with the DuSense digital spot UV ‘sensory coater’. When used in conjunction with the former, job set-up templates from the multi-finishers can be exported as XML files which are read by the Fiery Impose module to enable the necessary imposition and automatic addition of register marks and job barcodes to the printed sheets. These are then read in the finishing units to automate the necessary set-up, saving time over the whole print and finish process.

In the DuSense configuration, the EFI software splits the artwork file into separate CMYK and spot UV files. It send the former for output on the digital press, and the latter to the DuSense where it is RIPped ready for the printed sheets to arrive. As with the multi-finisher example, the necessary registration marks plus a 2D barcode for job identification are added automatically to the printed sheet so that the Duplo unit prints the correct UV coating. Duplo is also testing the combination of DuSense digital spot UV coating with lamination and foiling using GMP equipment, to offer a range of combined finishes.