Hickling & Squires, a commercial printer in the UK specialising in producing litho, digital and large format printing, has updated and enhanced its digital print capabilities with the acquisition of three Konica Minolta production presses.

The addition of AccurioPress C7090, AccurioPress 6120 and AccurioPress C12000 (including the IQ-501 Intelligent Quality Care unit) models, plus an additional Duplo 350 booklet maker, has increased Hickling & Squires’ capacity, along with rapid response support and servicing to match its growing sales and evolving customer needs.

The output quality, increased uptime, and speedy service response from Konica Minolta is said to have improved job turnaround time and helped protect customer trust. The technical benefits include auto-duplexing of long sheets of up to 900mm on the AccurioPress C7090, productivity of up to 7900 A4 pages per hour on the AccurioPress 6120, and automation for image position, registration, and colour control from the AccurioPress C12000 and IQ-501 combination.

Jamie Gilbert, production director at Hickling & Squires commented, ‘Being able to process larger sheets has been a massive benefit to us. Also, the provision of duplex (before we had always had to produce single-sided) means the register is perfect and is ideal for producing high-quality A4 booklets.’

‘The main use for these new solutions is print, fold, and stitch products and we supply a lot of work for the gaming sector, along with education sector customers such as universities and colleges,’ commented Mr Gilbert. ‘We ship across the country and aim to have a 24-hour turnaround in our digital print room, so these presses are well placed to support us in fulfilling these jobs to meet expectations. The service has been fantastic. If we need any help the Konica Minolta service team are with us in two to three hours, and we are very happy with the support we now get.’

Looking to the future, Hickling & Squires is turning its attention to further expansion possibilities. ‘We have invested in our litho for years but currently don’t have the physical capacity to expand it further; however the digital side of operations is typically a smaller footprint, so we are always looking to invest in that area to bring it forward and up to speed.’