Alpha Colour Printers has replaced a three-year-old Heidelberg Versafire EV with the latest Versafire LV and has upgraded its Prinect workflow at the same time.
The company from Quedgeley near Gloucester says the new press will enable it to expand its offerings as the machine comes with options to print neon colours. The previous machine, installed in 2022, gave the company a taste for additional colours, but came with gold and silver only.
“We can also print on textured boards which we could not do before,” says managing director Amy Muldrew. The machine can handle materials up to 470gsm, suitable for some carton work.
The neon colour options mean, she says, that “you can change colour settings to get stronger results and offer more options for customers”. These include greetings card publishers and designers. “We have already had talks with customers about introducing a neon digital range,” she says.
The company has also extended its Prinect workflow so that digital and litho presses can work in tandem, cutting set up times on the digital press and making it simpler to switch jobs between processes with an accurate colour match.
Muldrew says: “Prinect has also made a huge impact on how we work, providing a streamlined and efficient workflow for our team and allowing us to manage jobs easily and track production progress in real time.
“Prinect integration has resulted in less manual input and fewer errors, enabling our staff to focus on high quality print production for our customers. Overall, the team is excited about the opportunities provided by the new equipment.”
The company is strong in greetings cards and sponsors one of the categories at the Henry’s, the card industry’s awards. It prints some 22 million cards a year. It also prints large format graphics on a Mimaki and runs what was the first carbon balanced Speedmaster XL75 in the UK from a 2,2300m2 factory.
