The Woking-based outfit, which, as well as general commercial print, specialises in variable data work for the financial sector, brought in the new machines a week apart from each other around a month ago.
They replace two Xerox Versant 2100s, which Optichrome had run for around three years. When making the purchasing decision, Optichrome owner Natalie Stevens and managing director John Heywood had to take its digital production space, which wouldn’t be able to fit larger machines, into consideration.
Heywood said: “Digital and what we put through it is absolutely critical to us, it represents 50% of turnover and the vast majority of our profit because we put through mainly variable personalised print, so it has to be dependable, reliable and we tend to require a lot of flexibility in the team so that our programmers can also run the equipment.
“We wanted two of the same because of the load balancing issue. If you proof a job on one machine and then it gets passed over and the other is busy, you don’t want a customer to detect any difference.
"These machines are much more robust, they go back to how digital presses used to be built, a bit more like the high-end machines in terms of construction. We also like its speed, and the longer sheet is another big bonus for us.”
The four-colour machine uses a Heidelberg Prinect Digital frontend, printing at maximum speeds of up to 130ppm simplex at a maximum resolution of 1,200x4,800dpi. It prints on a variety of substrates at thickness of 52-400gsm, taking sheet size of up to 330mmx700mm.
“We are impressed and it’s encouraging us to migrate more work from litho. We can do things instantly on the Versafire and I challenge most people to tell the difference from litho," added Heywood.
The investment isn’t 53-staff Optichrome’s first spend with Heidelberg, it also runs a two-year-old Speedmaster SM 75, along with a five-colour Roland B1 litho machine with coater.
Its digital output also comes from a three-year old Xeikon 8500, which Heywood said it would consider replacing with a further Versafire if things continued to go well. It also runs two mailing lines, one KAS and one Sitma.
Optichrome, which produces a variety of commercial print, is set for sales of around £6m at the end of its financial year.
