The additional investment follows clients' demand for faster turnaround times leading them to switch away from litho and screen for short run point of sale.
"People are squeezing lead times and they want work targeted and quickly, which means more opportunities for digital," said chief executive Jim Newton. "We meet that demand for reactive work. It’s not unusual to have same-day turnarounds; two years ago that just didn’t happen."
Imprint initially targeted short-run litho PoS with the Onsets, but the S20s have also had an impact on its own screen printing operation,
"We wanted to hit the lower end of large-format litho in the market for runs of 50-150, why set up a litho press when the S20 delivers the quality?" said Newton. "We’re bringing all the four-colour work over to digital, but I don’t see us getting out of screen totally."
Last year the firm invested in a new factory to house the first two S20s, and since then it has accelerated its growth plans taking the third machine and extending the factory from 2,500sqm to 4,200sqm.
"Our third machine was in the plans for year two or three, but it’s there now," said Newton. "Our strategy hasn’t changed, but it has happened faster than we thought."
In addition to the presses the firm has also invested in workflow and post-press.
A Kongsberg cutting table is the centre piece of a 3D cardboard engineering department, headed up by Tony Neal who joined from local, now defunct, rival Spenaprint.
"It’s opened up a whole new market," said Newton. "Week by week more people learn we have the capability, and now the Kongsberg doesn’t stop, so we’re now looking at getting a platen."
IT investments include a web-to-print system offering online ordering, job tracking and an image library, which he said had "changed the whole dynamic of the business".
