The Bromley-based company, which has a customer base of 150 printers across the country and said it does good business supplying plates and film, took delivery of the machine last month.
The firm, which has five staff and a turnover of around £400,000, had been working with a small Xerox device but wanted to enhance its digital printing capability to enable its trade customers to provide more to their end-users.
The Linoprint CV machine, which is an OEM version of Ricoh's Pro C9100, was launched earlier this year and will allow the company to extend its range of services.
The business also looked at alternatives including the Xerox Versant 80 but opted for the Linoprint CV due to its wide range of options.
“There is also real cachet in the Heidelberg name. Printers like the brand and trust it,” said managing director Lee Williams.
The device offers the option of a fifth colour for white or clear varnish applications. It can handle stocks of 52gsm to 360gsm and, depending on feeder selection, 330x488mm standard sheets or 330x700mm banner formats. It has options to produce either 80 or 90 A4ppm.
“By offering this facility, some of our customers will no longer have to turn small jobs away,” said Williams.
“They can sell the potential of the Linoprint CV with its ability to produce 6pp A4 and landscape A4 products. Our customers can also inform their customers that they can now use clear and white. We’ve got 150 customers, which gives us 150 salesmen.”
Williams said designers might have previously conceived 6pp products as being too expensive. He added that another potential opportunity of the device is the ability to produce 10 books as proofs or samples for a customer’s 20,000-book run.
“The flexibility of the Linoprint justified its cost and gave us something many other printers can’t offer themselves. Because there is no fusing oil used in the ink the finish is low sheen so more akin to a litho finish,” said Williams.
Willows Magic can supply flat sheets for printers to finish in-house although it also offers a bookletmaking service using its Plockmatic bookletmaker.
