The Peterborough book printer took delivery of the new sheetfed machine on 6 September and the installation was signed off yesterday (30 September), with training set to begin on Monday.
Bonacia managing director Rosie Whitelock told Printweek that a reduced colour cost was the main benefit the press would bring to the company, though it will also increase capacity.
With 929sqm production space, the business currently prints on two Kodak NexPress machines, including a NexPress SX3300 with an oversized glosser, as well as two Xerox Nuveras. A third Nuvera, which finished its lease just as the i300 was installed, has now gone out.
“Going over to the inkjet will mean that we can do jobs that are majority black and white but that have some colour in them at a much cheaper rate,” Whitelock said.
The business had been looking at inkjet for a few years and had explored a number of options, but Whitelock said the technology was “now really starting to come into its own” and that the i300 “is a relatively lower cost of entry into the inkjet world”.
The £350,000 spend represents the company’s first Canon purchase. It has invested more than £1.5m in new machinery since 2015, including a Muller Martini Vareo perfect binder with inline InfiniTrim three-knife trimmer in 2019.
Bonacia is also planning to make further machinery investments over the next three years, with its next scheduled purchase in mid-2022 in the area of hardback books.
“We’re still quite manual on the hardback side of things so we’re planning to put in a more automatic line,” said Whitelock.
The business currently employs around 70 staff, with seven young people having recently joined in Kickstarter positions. It has 23 more Kickstarter roles to fill and is looking to recruit in areas including printing, finishing, and admin by December.
The company’s turnover had fallen by around 25% during the pandemic, partly due to a drop in work from the education sector when schools were closed, but Whitelock said its profit margins are higher than they were pre-pandemic and that the new Canon press should help turnover to climb once more.
