London-based Wellington Press has recently added a Ricoh C901 production press to extend its digital production capabilities and meet growing customer demand for high-quality, quick turnaround work. The new machine, installed at the end of August, has already proved itself to be a high quality, high production workhorse for the company.
Says Nick Murray, Managing Director, Wellington Press: "We're a very progressive company and saw early on the potential of digital print, and it has formed a key component of our overall production mix for many years. Earlier this year, it became apparent we needed to further expand this side of the business to respond to customer demand and give us the added capacity to grow the business and move it forward. Our customers are predominantly national and global brands or many of the UK's leading advertising and marketing agencies, so the overwhelming majority of our work is colour critical and of the highest quality.
"To this end, we needed to invest in a technology that would complement our existing range of litho and digital machines, and ensure we could still produce the level of quality expected of us by all customers. The Pro C901 is a very impressive piece of kit and a great addition to the business. In terms of price, production ability and quality, it is pitched perfectly at the market – the production speed of the machine is outstanding in its class and there is no compromise on quality. It complements our Indigo and litho presses perfectly and is enabling us to use the right technology for any given job, which has helped us to maximise efficiencies right across print production and keep waste and downtime to a minimum. We have a number of clients for whom we produce high-quality multi-page manuals for example, often at very short notice, and the Pro C901 pushes this work through with quality of the highest consistency."
The Ricoh Pro C901 digital press offer commercial and corporate printers enhanced productivity, flexibility, quality and profitability, with a 20 per cent higher duty cycle than previous models at 700,000 impressions per month. Uptime is also enhanced with larger sized toner bottles that require fewer changes per shift. Substrates up to 350gsm are included as part of the standard settings on both models with the media library continually updated to reflect broader grade choices.
The Ricoh Pro C901 digital press includes a RIP that improves performance by processing multiple job pages simultaneously and Xobjects caching to enable PDF files that include Xobjects to print at speeds previously associated only with VDP jobs. The press also offers inline job editing and Job Preset Quick Select. Job Preset Quick Select is a productivity technique that applies predefined settings used in virtual printers and hot folders to jobs in the job list.
Continues Mr Murray: "We have also recently invested in a web-to-print system, which will eventually link across all our print production and integrated communications capabilities. As the Ricoh machine can print such high quality in low volumes and on demand, it will form a key component of our web-to-print strategy in the future, giving us the versatility and freedom to operate the business as we need to."
Says Gareth Parker, Strategic Marketing Manager, Ricoh UK: "Knowing Nick and his company Wellington Press, it's clear it's a very forward looking operation and has a robust investment strategy to ensure it keeps at the forefront of what is a constantly changing and challenging market. The addition of the Pro C901 means Wellington Press now has a formidable production portfolio across the board from high-volume litho and digital as well as the flexibility to print the highest quality digital print on demand, without compromise. It's especially exciting to play an important part in their web-to-print approach, making sure Wellington has the production management and digital flexibility to respond to their customer demands. We look forward to seeing the results."
