Rayfount Buy Presstek 34DI Digital Offset Press

Rayfount, digital printer in Coventry, diversify into medium run, personalised mailers, following investment in Presstek 34DI digital offset press.

Robert Donohoe, Director of Rayfount, said "In the past, when we printed the personalised letters on a Konica Minolta C6500 digital printer, we were only competitive on short runs up to 1000 copies".

"Consequently, we lost the business".

"Now we are profitably printing runs of 20,000+ on the DI press and overprinting them in black and white on the C6500".

"We are already doing this for two customers and hope to grow this side of our business, once word gets round that we are competitive and high quality".

This is not the only reason why Rayfount purchased the DI34 press".

"For the last ten years, we have specialised in short run, fast turn round digital printing and large format posters, banner and pop-up display stands," said Robert, whose father started the firm in the early eighties when they were typesetters".

"Customers were asking us to do longer runs and this was causing a problem".

"Realistically, the break even point on a digital press is 700 A3 sheets".

"If customers asked us to do runs of ten or twenty thousand, then we had to outsource the work to litho printers".

"As well as losing margin and control, our trade suppliers were not used to turning jobs round in two days, which is what our customers have grown to expect," he continued.

"We increased the run lengths to 4000 on the digital press so that we could meet their delivery requirement and keep the customers happy but we couldn't make money from it".

Rayfount had been aware of digital offset presses for some years but were concerned that they didn't have the skills in-house to operate a litho press.

"We looked at the 34DI being demonstrated at Northprint but even then we were far from certain that this was the machine for us".

"It was only when Presstek took us to Vision Print in Telford, where the DI operator had previously run an Indigo, I began to feel more confident".

"He assured me that if we had operated an Indigo, then we would have no difficulties transferring to a DI and he was right".

"Presstek gave us two weeks on-site training and we were printing live jobs in the first week".

"We haven't looked back since," he added.

"We are now competitive in new markets".

"Customers that only knew us for very short run work are asking us to quote for longer runs and we are winning new and repeat business".

"They've been very impressed with the quality and speed of turn round that we can achieve on the DI press".

"We are printing some jobs using FM screening and that is proving very successful," Robert pointed out.

"The press has given us the versatility and capacity to grow the business and increase our profitability without employing any more staff at this stage of our development, which, for a small printer, makes a significant difference to our bottom line".

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