Colourfast Financial has added a Konica Minolta bizhub C1100 colour printer and two bizhub 1250P mono presses to its production armoury to support the firm’s growth strategy.
The Basildon-based firm is now the largest single-site user of Konica Minolta digital production presses in the UK, installing this new equipment brings the total fleet size to six mono and five colour systems.
This latest investment forms an integral part of a three-year growth strategy is aiming to increase revenues from the commercial market to £1 million, representing a 150% increase.
‘With the new colour press which delivers outstanding 1200 dpi, we’re looking to really push into the commercial market,’ said managing director Darren Bacon. ‘It’s a slower process breaking into this new sector, but we’re proactively marketing our business and doors are beginning to open.’
Five years ago 75% of the firm’s work was produced on litho presses but today, 90% of jobs are output on the Konica Minolta digital print systems. ‘The work we do brings a new meaning to the term fast turnaround,’ said Mr Bacon. ‘Typically we have 24-36 hours to turnaround an individual project, time is very much of the essence, as much of what we produce has to be flown out to the US, Far East and across Europe, so the quicker we can get copies off the press and shipped, the better.
‘Say we’re running off 500 copies of a 300 page document, with litho we’re looking at a minimum of 24 hours, but by utilising the digital press we can complete it in under ten. The other big advantage of digital is that we’re producing from the first hour, binding as we go along.’
‘The new equipment will deliver additional capacity and improve productivity for the firm which has almost all its existing presses running full capacity. We’ve now got capacity to cope with additional workload, to accommodate unexpected workload peaks and the new presses also provide us with a business continuity back-up plan in the event of unforeseen downtime,’ explained Mr Bacon.
