The Leicester-headquartered firm installed the first of the two HP T230 Color Inkjet Web Presses in early May, with the second machine scheduled to go in during August.
“Although we could probably do with it sooner, if possible,” said deputy managing director Patrick Headley.
The two presses will boost the firm’s digital capacity by 1m A4 sheets per day.
Headley said that the firm was already looking at adding another digital web press this year, possibly one of the 122m/min, 558mm-wide T230’s larger siblings from the HP T400 series.
“We have two distinct sides to our business, the direct mail side and the transactional side and the latter will always run on reels that are around 450mm wide because we put them straight into transactional [mailing] machines,” he said.
“The great thing about a T400 is that we could print it two across and just slice it down the middle.”
This latest multimillion-pound spend follows the company investing £2m in two CMC Machinery wrapping lines earlier this year, as part of its new digital envelope mailpack product launch in March.
The twin thermal inkjet HP T230s join a digital battery that includes Screen Truepress Jet520s and a number of reel-fed laser lines. Headley said high-speed web technology will ultimately represent the future of the business.
“We’re still very committed to the special products arena, but inkjet print quality has got better and better in recent years. Ink prices are coming down, sealing technology is coming up and the substrate restrictions are easing - so I can’t really see us buying another litho press in reality,” said Headley.
“We’re still completely wedded to our core products – the action or one-piece mailer type of projects – but that is now less than half our turnover, and we hit the critical point last year when we ended doing more in the rest of the business than we did on the presses.”
To support the recent and future kit investments the group, which is celebrating its 21st anniversary this year, is looking at adding 3,300sqm to its current 9,300sqm facilities.
The group is made up of GI Solutions, data management operation GI Insight and Chinese project managment division SynYan.
