GI chief executive Patrick Headley signed for the new HP PageWide Web Press T230 earlier this month after visiting installations in the US with a GI team to finalise the new machine’s configuration.

GI's press will be the first in the UK to feature HP’s new High Definition Nozzle Architecture (HDNA) technology, which was launched last year. The 1,200dpi, 122m/min, colour and mono, press will also be configured inline with Hunkeler unwind and rewind units, a DP8 dynamic punch/perf unit and a third-party flood coater for priming.

“We haven’t quite got to a place where we’re as confident in the substrate flexibility as we are say with cut-sheet digital, so we’re putting a pre-coater on this machine. We’re looking to possibly retrofit a post-coater on it as well, because we’ve gone with the HDNA higher-resolution system so in some respects this T230 is a bit of an experiment in that we’re looking to take some of the work off our cut-sheet digital machines,” said Headley

The press is slated to go into production at its Leicester site in mid April.

This will be GI’s third T230, the first two were installed in 2014, and to support the extra capacity, circa 1 million A4 sheets per day, GI will also add an unwind unit to a third Sitma inserting line.

The total spend is around £1.5m.

According to Headley, the next investment will most likely be a wider high-speed digital web press, possibly later this year after a fact finding trip to Drupa.

“HP have been a great partner for us, they get us, and they’re trying to help us get to the next stage in terms of a wider web. I think our next phase will be removing the first T230 and replacing it with a wider machine.

“It’s definitely not a slam-dunk with HP though, we constantly measure the market and we were impressed with a number of other machines, but today [HP] offers the best fit for us.”

The GI Solutions Group is made up of mail and transactional production arm GI Solutions, data management operations GI Insight and Cognesia and creative agency GI Red.