Colourfast Financial adds Konica Minoltas to fire bid for commercial print

Basildon printer Colourfast Financial wants to mark as much of an impact in commercial printing as it has already done in city work.

Basildon City printer Colourfast Financial is hoping to grow commercial sales on the back of investment in three Konica Minolta presses.

Two are Bizhub Press 1250P mono machines and the third is a C1100 colour machine, currently the flagship of Konica Minolta’s family. The investment gives the company a 6:5 split of mono and colour machines making it the largest single-site user for Konica Minolta. Colourfast Financial managing director Darren Bacon says he already plans to add a sixth colour press.

“With the new colour press, we’re looking to really push into the commercial market,” he says. “We are looking for a digital sales guy, who really understands the digital print market because it is different to litho. But we don’t think that that guy exists, because we’re not sure that the world has got digital yet.”

Currently Colourfast is focused on the City and financial sector delivering compliance, IPO, M&A and similar documents overnight. Almost all are perfect bound, says Bacon. “We have two perfect binders and two guillotines because we believe that you have to build resources in finishing. He adds: “In this sector where delivery times are crucial, you are only as good as your delivery driver. We have always worked from finishing forwards.”

The perfect binders run hot melt because there is no time for a PUR bind to cure. The Konica Minoltas do not use a fusing oil and finished pages bind well with the conventional glue.

Digital accounts for 90% of production as Bacon points out this is now faster than litho. A 300pp document with a run of 500 copies would take 24 hours to print on a litho press with platemaking and makereadies, but just ten hours on digital. As the pages are printed in collated sequence, the job can be in the binder and still on press. With litho, all the pages need to be printed before finishing can begin.

Likewise there is a quality gap between the processes – in favour of digital. “On the digital machines we will print a true solid black, which you can never achieve with litho because there will always be some roller marking, even when printing under the black,” he explains. “And the jobs produced on the colour machines are at least as good as litho with no variation during the run.”

Bacon now wants to take this experience into the commercial market. Financial sector sales amount to £1.8 million with a further £400,000 from commercial print. The latest investments are of a three-year strategy to grow sales from commercial print to £1 million annually.