Newman Thomson is upgrading its B2 Indigo replacing an Indigo 12000 with a 100K and the Indigo 120K upgrade kit.
The Burgess Hill business combines two formats of Indigo press with three ten-colour long perfecting B2 Speedmasters to be the largest printer in mid Sussex.
“It will be up and running this week,” says sales director Ed Thomson. “It gives us greater capacity and reliability.”
HP has always said that the 100K series machine represents a 30% productivity increase over the previous generation of B2 press. “It should allow us to migrate more work from litho to digital,” he says. That in turn will create more capacity for the litho presses as make ready heavy work can move to a platform better suited to shorter runs.
Those will include fine art projects to take advantage of the improved imaging unit on the new machine. Newman Thomson runs the full spread of work from business cards, pull up banners, through to magazines, books, point of sale and wedding stationery. The company uses Carbon Balanced papers and runs Kodak’s process free Sonora plates.
The Indigo 12000 was installed in 2019 and offered seven-colour printing. The replacement has only four-colour plus white capability. However, the business has both Indigo 7800 and 7900 which include seven-colour capability.
The company has no plans for additional finishing equipment as this is an upgrade and there is a full line up of both digitally focused and volume focus finishing equipment. Instead the priority will be on improving the workflow to take advantage of the additional productivity and to make sure that shorter run jobs are processed with minimal fuss. “We will need to workflow to match the extra productivity,” Thomson says. “It’s about getting jobs to the press quicker. That is what is next on the agenda.”
