Commercial print shop faced with shrinking run sizes, declining prices, and increasingly tight deadlines- Anicolor technology scores highly with very short makeready times, excellent productivity, and minimal waste
- Anicolor press preferred to high-performance digital printing system
- Customer won over by successful preliminary tests
Like many other print shops, DAZ Druckerei Albisrieden AG in Zurich (Switzerland) has been faced with shrinking run sizes, declining prices and increasingly tight deadlines. At present, the average run length is around 2,000 sheets per job. A large number of test runs showed that the new Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor was the perfect match for the print shop's business structure. Recently, the company ordered a five-color Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor with coating unit from Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg). When it is installed early in 2014, it will be the first Speedmaster XL 75 with the Anicolor short inking unit in Switzerland. DAZ has been one of the leading print shops in Zurich and the surrounding area since 1947. It has over 30 employees and produces advertising materials for a customer base with exacting requirements.
"When we performed a number of test runs with difficult printing forms on the Anicolor press at the premises of a commercial field test customer in Frankfurt, we were incredibly impressed with the results," explains DAZ's Commercial Director Wendelin Lipp. "After just 20 start-up sheets, we had saleable products with no streaks whatsoever. We never expected it to work so quickly or so effectively," he adds. Lipp considers Anicolor to be a pioneering technology that is perfect for the Albisrieden print shop. Its extremely short makeready times are also ideal for web-to-print, because this normally involves a lot of jobs in short runs. "Unlike digital printing, though, Anicolor is also a cost-efficient solution for runs of 400 sheets upward," stresses Lipp.
The print shop decided on Anicolor technology after an evaluation process lasting several years. It was initially leaning toward purchasing a B2 digital printing system, but the impressive test runs worked in Anicolor's favor - all the more since this technology can be integrated seamlessly into the existing high-quality digital printing technology at DAZ Druckerei Albisrieden AG.
During test runs with the print shop's own jobs in Heidelberg, the Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor also scored highly in terms of speed. It produced three completely different printing forms in the space of 20 minutes. Equally impressive was the simultaneous plate changing in all five printing units with Autoplate XL, which took less than two minutes.