Pureprint has taken delivery and installed its second HP Indigo 10000, the B2 version of the liquid toner press. It becomes the first UK printer with a second of the machines, though not the first in the world nor even in Europe with multiple installations.
Pureprint became one of the first beta users of the press after its launch at Drupa theee years ago. Even then it planned to have a brace of the machines to join its three third generation Indigos. The investment will take Pureprint’s digital print capacity to £10 million annually, five years after it took deliver of the first Indigo.
It has “transformed our business,” says chief executive Mark Handford. “We now offer an ever-increasing range of print on demand and short to medium run products including targeted direct mail, photobooks, calendars, published books, financial reports, packaging and point of sale materials. The combination of the best digital printing technology with our data, workflow and marketing platforms has offered genuine innovation to our clients and assisted in us winning £2 million of new contracts in the last three months.”
Among these is a growing range of direct mail and printing for lostmyname.com, the personalised children’s books business that won a record amount of support from Dragons’ Den, where according to business development director Richard Owers, Pureprint is now lead supplier. The additional capacity is reckoned to be vital in the run up to the Christmas period. “They were outgrowing their original supplier,” he says. “It’s a very very interesting model.”
For Handford, this is just one of a group of new style communications products that Pureprint is working on with customers to help transform their business. It is having the same impact on the printer. The company is gradually shifting its litho capacity to Heidelberg XL106s, away from B2 presses, polarising towards digital for smaller formats and litho for longer runs.
What started as a digital division for publishing and fine art printing is now producing increasing volumes of personalised direct mail, exploiting the format size of the B2 press to create products that are not possible on other digital presses.
There are no plans yet to invest in larger format finishing specifically for the digital operation. The company is able to cope with its existing line up of mainly Duplo equipment, having added capacity at the end of last year, while being able to call upon the machinery from the litho side if necessary.
While Pureprint is the first UK company to take a second Indigo 10000, it is only the third in Europe to do so, while in the US Sandy Alexander has had three of the B2 machines since February this year.
Pureprint’s second Indigo 10000 comes after beta testing the first.
