The spend of just more than £200,000 was instituted as Apple looks to take on jobs that its previous digital printer, a Linoprint C901, couldn’t handle.
The Versafire was installed in late October, just a week after the Bristol-based outfit took delivery of a Morgana DigiBook 200 perfect binder and a Matrix MX-530 pneumatic laminator and foiler.
Implementation of the Business Manager workflow began last week and will be completed by July 2017 when additional services such as remote data collection and client portals have been added.
Managing director Mark Bracey said: “We had been mixing traditional litho and digital for nearly four years and we basically felt that we needed to offer our customers different formats. We were getting lots of enquiries for six-page A4s and landscape jobs that we couldn’t produce on the old machine, so we would take them on as litho, which is not really cost-effective on smaller runs.
“It was quite an easy choice really, we went to Drupa and did look at a few different machines but once we saw the quality and extended format of the Versafire we were convinced straight away.
“We haven’t noticed much change other than the obvious so far but there will be huge benefits in the future.”
The five-colour (CMYK plus white) Versafire prints at maximum speeds of 2,700 A4sph and 2,400 A3sph. The Versafire CV was known as the Linoprint CV prior to the name change announced at Drupa.
Last week, Heidelberg launched an optional neon yellow spot colour compatible with the machine.
It prints at a maximum resolution of 1,200x4,800dpi and takes maximum sheet size of 330x700mm at weights ranging between 52gsm and 360gsm.
The Morgana finishing kit investment was made to handle the firm's increasing number of digital short-run jobs.
“We were getting enquiries for short-run PUR, laminating and foiling, which we couldn’t do cost-effectively through litho machinery, so these are dedicated to the digital press basically, for shorter-run work,” added Bracey.
Business Manager, which replaces a Prinect Printready system, was described by Bracey as an easy upgrade.
The Prinect Digital Front End will allow Apple to link its digital operation into the workflow. Bracey and his fellow managing director Murray Thomson visited Belgian software company Cern to test the software before upgrading.
£2.5m-turnover Apple employs 24 staff in its 1,300sqm premises.
On the litho side, it runs a Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75 with perfector and a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 74, along with a variety of finishing kit, including three Heidelberg Stahlfolders, two Polar guillotines and an ST300 stitching line.
