Hickling & Squires has become the first UK company to install the AccuriuoJet 30000 B2 Konica Minolta sheetfed inkjet press at its presses in Nottingham. It follows installation of the proviso model, the KM1E at 8 Group in another part of Nottingham.
The investment by Hickling & Squires follows installation of an eight-colour perfecting Speedmaster XL75 earlier this year. The company also has four Konica Minolta toner machines as well as a range of large format inkjet printers including a Fujifilm flatbed Acuity.
It has been the investment in the toner presses that brought printer and supplier together and that this partnership provided the opportunity to accelerate a move into B2 inkjet printing.
The Konica Minolta press uses LED UV to cure its inks which keeps the press footprint tight and delivers additional flexibility over a press using water based inks. Hickling & Squire production director Jamie Gilbert says: “We can now produce on a wider range of substrates, including plastics and fabrics, at a much bigger scale.”
The digital press is housed in its own climate controlled room to control temperature and humidity. Its main flow of work will be jobs that are larger, in both run length and extent, than is comfortable to produce on the toner presses, and too small for the XL75. The company’s meat and drink comprises marketing collateral for customers across education, hospitality, leisure and retail brands. It will be able to cut turnaround time on shorter runs for these customers.
Gilbert says that the press is already in full production and is being fine tuned on substrates and the impact on quality of changes in ink coverage settings.
Any concerns about the shift to the new technology is eased by the proximity of Konica Minolta’s service team, just one junction away on the M1. There industrial print sales specialist Mark Bladon adds: “Jamie and the team needed to upgrade the litho equipment, but instead of simply replacing like for like, he recognised that a lot of his short run work needed litho level quality but with more flexibility. The AccurioJet 30000 delivers exactly that – a B2 inkjet platform that sits perfectly between litho and digital. It’s the first AccurioJet 30000 in the country, and it’s a fantastic showcase for what this technology can do.”
