Paragon Customer Communications has taken delivery of a Ricoh Pro VC70000 inkjet web press, a move that will open new markets for the Dagenham business.
At the same time the business has already opened up a new market following investment in what was the UK’s first mono only Ricoh Pro VC20100 inkjet press some 18 months ago. This is now at the heart of a books on demand project for an educational publisher. A Pro C9210 cutsheet machine has been added to produce covers for the books. The investment also includes Hunkeler Bookline, Renz wire binder stitching, laminator and Horizon perfect binder alongside an existing Bourg machine.
Site director Dave Phillips is reluctant to name the applications that Paragon will target for what is Ricoh’s flagship press. It can print at 1200dpi resolutions on coated papers. “It is not for the books project,” he says. “It will give us increased volume and will give us different products that we can produce.” This will include some jobs that have had to be printed on litho presses.
“It was tough last year. we have had to diversify and do different things. One of our goals is to grow over last year. We have made some step changes in what we do and how we do it,” he says.
“With the books project we were approached by a publisher to see whether we would be willing to look at production on demand. The publisher had been producing in small batch quantities, but even with 30 or 50 copies at a time, there is stock left over at the end of the year that has to be cleared out.
“Now it all are produced on demand. Order today and we will send it out tomorrow, something that is happening as ecommerce is exploding because everyone is at home. Printed books complement online learning.”
The Paragon Customer Communications factory has installed previous generations of Ricoh inkjet technology, from the first Info Print 5000s to the VC60000, the top of the range machine before the latest Pro VC70000. Paragon will be keeping two of these machines with staff moving across to the new press. Investment in Ricoh’s Process Director will help optimise production workflows across the presses and to other Paragon sites.
The continuing investment in inkjet is not blinding the company to other technologies. “This does not mean that we are not looking at litho,” says Phillips, “as well as some other print technologies.”
