The kit cost around £80,000 and is due to be installed next week at the Witney, Oxfordshire-based firm's premises. It will replace a Kodak Magnus, which the company has had for over eight years.
Fine Print Services produces brochures, leaflets, branded stationery and exhibition materials with two Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75s, an HP Indigo 7800 and SwissQprint and Zünd wide-format machinery.
Around 55 staff make a turnover of just shy of £5m from customers including pharmaceutical and household brands as well as big names like Goodwood.
Managing director Dan Bakewell said: “We thought about another Kodak but what swung it was the integration with our Heidelberg Prinect workflow."
The 2,500 plates per month anticipated output will feed the firm's Speedmaster XL 75-5 LE-UV press, installed 18 months ago, and a conventional Speedmaster XL 75-5. Average run length is around 1,000 sheets.
“The platesetter is a workhorse, churning out plates to keep the presses running. They are all much of a muchness in terms of dot quality; it's the reliability and back up that are important.
“With two XL 75 presses, we always have an automatic backup solution. But we have only one CTP device and if it fails everything stops.”
He said the kit will enhance JDF and JMF processes to seamlessly supply information about plates made back into the company's Shuttleworth MIS to capture costs and update job milestones.
Fine Print Services sources almost all of its consumables from Heidelberg, including plates, chemistry and Saphira technology.
