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September marked a major milestone for the University of Surrey, although, contrary to popular opinion, this landmark had nothing to do with the soaring profits at the union’s ‘Chancellors’ bar, where the return of thousands of thirsty undergraduates led to bumper sales of cut-price lager. Rather, the month in question was the busiest experienced by the university’s print department since its incarnation more than three decades ago.

No less than 2.5m pages were processed that month, a five-fold increase on the volumes printed there 10 years prior. Among the printroom’s output are newsletters, prospectuses, flyers, posters and business cards. This increased throughput is down in no small part to the role print manager Gary Ive has played in transforming the university’s print operation since his arrival in 1999. "There was no drive or ambition evident when I arrived," adds Ive, who joined from a role at Xerox in facilities management. Ive does not take all the credit for the turnaround, though, which he attributes to having the right kit and a re-motivated team. "The university had a contract with Xerox but that simply wasn’t right for what we were producing. So I shopped around before approaching Danka with a view to developing our site."

A significant change of Ive’s reign has been the phasing out of the University’s litho presses, remnant now with the presence of a sole single-colour Ryobi press. "We’ve changed the way the university works," he boasts. Under his watch, the university now operates a Kodak NexPress 2500, a Ricoh C900, several wide-format machines and no less than 80 Ricoh multifunctional devices spread across the 300-acre campus. "We have a good relationship with Ricoh. They have a positive hands-on approach and that is one that we appreciate. It’s a good example of working in a partnership," he adds.

Big investment
The University of Surrey started life as Battersea Polytechnic Institute, which was founded in 1891, receiving its charter seven decades later in 1966. Fast-forward 44 years and, with more than 15,000 students on its books, the university, much like its print facility, has changed considerably.

As it operates within the confines of a university campus, the print centre has to run within its means – this has not impacted on the investments it has made in recent years, though. Last year’s delivery of a Kodak NexPress 2500 using Kodak’s Dimensional Inks was a UK first. In April of that year, it notched up another UK debut with a Ricoh Pro C900s production press. Commenting on the NexPress, Ive says it was a big investment for any educational department. "Digital print allows us to work in different ways and using Dimensional Inks is one way to do that."

Combining the digital firepower of its NexPress and its Ricoh C900, the university has been going great guns with its personalised prospectuses initiative. Not long after the NexPress was delivered, the print centre had already churned out 21,000 fully personalised undergraduate prospectuses and 4,000 postgraduate pieces that are tailored to the courses and subjects the potential student is interested in studying. And thanks to the Dimensional Ink, the tactile effect has been used to add variable height to the university crest on degree certificates and open day materials, which are all now printed in-house.

While 80% of the print centre’s output ends up in the hands of university students, lecturers and undergraduates, the remaining 20% of business comes from external clients, such as local governments and councils. It is also targeting local business, offering template-driven websites enabling them to order a range of print collateral online, all printed on site at the university. It is hard to imagine where any incoming extra work arriving in the immediate future will go, though, with Ive himself admitting the centre is "full to capacity".

However, next year that will be rectified when the print team moves into purpose-built premises that will increase its footprint by a third and no doubt catalyse further investment. Ive’s anticipation is palpable. "We’ll be moving to premises designed by myself and the team to our specification," he says.  "It’ll allow us to optimise our workflow for higher volumes and better quality production." And when that eventually happens, you’d imagine it’ll put the university’s print department even closer to the top of the class.

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UNIVERSITY OF SURREY
Print manager Gary Ive
Staff 12
Kit Ricoh C900, Kodak NexPress 2500, single-colour Ryobi, wide-format print
Outputs Personalised prospectuses, newsletters, flyers, posters, T-shirts, banners, business cards