Both have been installed at the Gloucester-based firm’s premises in the past few months, at a total cost of around £12,500.
The AMS Astrojet M1 printer, which can print up to 3,600 letter size pages or 9000 envelopes/hour, will primarily be used by Severn for envelope printing. It has a print quality up to 1,600dpi and can accommodate substrates of 0.1mm to 0.5mm thickness.
The StudioRIP was bought from prepress specialists Prepress UK. It was needed to keep the firm’s Kodak Prinergy driven Epson 7800 printers producing ISO12647-2 certified proofs after Kodak had advised the firm that it would no longer be supporting the Epson printer connection it had originally provided.
“The StudioRIP Inkjet package has cut our proofing time by 50% and given us a lot more flexibility because we can also link it to several other devices besides the Epson printers and keep the colour accuracy all the way through the building,” said production manager Lyndon Murray.
“The post installation support has also been extraordinary. We had an issue with getting an InDesign file through the system. We called the Prepress UK support line and they linked directly into the system, tweaked the software set-up, and within 20 minutes we were running the file.”
Earlier this year Severn boosted its litho operation after buying a B2 four-colour Komori Lithrone S29 with H-UV curing. The firm also operates a range of Heidelberg presses.
Severn, which has 53 staff, serves customers in the manufacturing, agricultural and business-to-business fields and also works for environmental organisations including Greenpeace and The Wildlife Trusts.
The firm attained ISO 14001 accreditation and FSC certification in 2004 and last year it became one of nine printing companies in the UK to meet the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme’s environmental standards.
