In an interview with PrintWeek, Big Mountain president Jason Cardonick said: "Our clients are looking for a one-stop shop, not just the large format work but also grand format projects in a significantly higher resolution and that is really what the Durst is allowing us to bring to market.

"This puts at a level where we’re competing with very few other companies because few others have this technology anywhere in the country."

The Durst Rho 500R prints six-color, 600dpi images on vinyl, mesh and other superwide roll media at speeds up to 3,760sq ft/hr.  It can also print three independent images from three separate job queues on three different 1.6m rolls simultaneously to achieve high efficiency and handle a broader range of applications.

The Rho 500R can operate unattended, and uses less ink than comparable superwide platforms, enabling it to cut operation costs.

Big Mountain focuses on billboards, transit and retail display/point of purchase signage. "Our core competency is out of home but that market has become so competitive and as a result there’s been a lot of price pressure," Cardonick explained.

"This machine is really designed for the gold standards of point-of-purchase — fabric, banners and clients who are looking for a higher-quality representation of the image they want to promote to their customers. We looked at a lot of presses and we just felt that spending the extra money for this equipment allows us to sell something that our competitors couldn’t."

Cardonick said Big Mountain doesn’t do traditional commercial printing such as direct mailers, though he suggested they are now looking into it. But Big Mountain has been able to tap into a niche but lucrative large- and grand-format printing customer segment in the expanding US casino industry.

The company has opened facilities in the gambling meccas of Las Vegas and Atlantic City, NJ and Cardonick said: "There is no industry that operates at as fast a pace as the casino industry and we’ve learned the language of casinos and it’s a different language than the ad world or end consumers and so we have a comfort level with that group."

Big Mountain has worked with a casino conglomerate on campaigns involving up to 80 different casinos - all of which need consistent images. But, Cardonick said: "That’s the exception. In most cases it’s, ‘We just booked this entertainer for President’s Day Weekend and we need billboards, posters, flat-toppers and taxi tops all at the last minute’.

"We've done it for 15 years and we have a reputation for figuring how to get it done within a tight time frame."