The investment has involved purchase of five Konica Minolta bizhub Press mono presses, one Konica C8000 colour press, a Duplo 5000 Pro bookletmaker, Duplo DPB500 perfect binder, Duplo DCD645i slitter-cutter-creaser, and an Esko CAD cutting system.

The aim is to fulfil the majority of the university’s print requirements in-house, and to start to process significantly more work for external clients.  

“We’ve looked at local printers’ pricing and feel we can now compete with them on equipment, price and quality, so we’re now looking to turn a minimal profit,” said print and commercial manager Amanda Thorley. “Because we’re an educational institute we have to be careful, but we are aiming to achieve a base line profit margin of 10%.” 

She added: “If we bring in all the university print work, that alone will save a lot of money. So I’ve been highlighting to people at the university the products we can now produce, like pop-up banners, display banners and rolling banners.”

Thorley said the centre would first target other colleges and universities and other public sector organisations without their own in-house print facilities, such as police and fire departments. Currently the centre does a small amount of commercial work, for example for a group of ex-students who have since set up a local theatre company.

Thorley joins De Montfort University from a disbanded in-house facility at Nottingham City Council. “Public sector organisations are looking to save costs because everyone is facing cut backs, but I don’t think they save money closing [in-house facilities],” she said. 

The De Montfort facility is also soon to replace its, until now, entirely paper-based job tracking system with a Tharstern MIS, which made up £30,000-£40,000 of the £1m spend. 

The new kit joins an existing Ricoh colour press and two Canon Océ wide-format printers.