The circa-£120,000 machine was purchased along with Agfa’s Asanti workflow to replace a two-year-old Mimaki JFX200 flatbed. It arrived at the beginning of July, initially to serve one high-volume contract, and B2B managing director Jane Green, who spotted the machine at Fespa, said that the Oxfordshire-based firm had already been able to take on further higher-volume jobs it would previously have turned down.
“We needed extra production capability so this was effectively for speed reasons but whilst retaining quality,” said Green.
“We’d been looking at replacements for a while but Fespa was the time I was reminded of the Agfa. We were going to go down one route then saw it and that made us rethink a little bit.
B2B production manager Chris Dalby added that Agfa had offered a “high-level of service" and said that the Asanti workflow had been crucial in alleviating bottlenecks.
"Asanti pre-flight picks up errors that would otherwise be overlooked, enabling us to verify the files we are sent to achieve the results our customers expect," said Dalby.
Launched at Drupa, the 2.5m-wide H2500i has a variety of modes and prints at speeds of between 8sqm/hr and 115sqm/hr. The six-colour (CMYK plus light cyan and light magenta) plus white machine is fitted with air-cooled UV LED lamps, which can be switched on and off instantly, enabling the Anapurna to print on thin, heat-sensitive material.
Green added: “It’s got quality at one end all the way through to very workable production modes for our size of business. It’s that flexibility we like the most, it’s simple to use as a machine and it’s incredibly well engineered.
“Our business model is high quality, fast turnaround and low volume, and we always avoided any production type jobs because they get in the way of us having fast turnaround times but we bought it to do those kind jobs and from the minute we got the printer we were doing them.
“It was delivered on a Tuesday, working completely on a Thursday and from thereon in we were printing that Friday and had got through a set of inks by the time we got to Monday.”
Seven-staff B2B operates from a 280sqm premises in Bicester, and runs a number of HP Latex printers along with a variety of finishing equipment. It prints the likes of signs, posters, banners and vehicle wraps.
