The Bournemouth-based company hopes to extend its customer base by providing new services with the installation last week of the Heidelberg digital press. 

Ahead of its anniversary on 1 June, Palm Print hopes to find new on-demand printing opportunities with the new machine, which will add six-page A4 and four-page A4 landscape formats to its portfolio. 

Operations director David Melbourne said this product would “enable us to offer something different from others on the market”.

However, Melbourne believes there is work to be done yet. “Our existing customers are not familiar with what digital machines can do. We need to show them,” he said. 

“We don’t want our customers to think of digital as a limited technology, we want them to know the full scope of the product,” he said. 

The Linoprint CV will enable Palm Print to handle stocks of 52 to 360gsm and takes a maximum paper size of 330x700mm. It can print at speeds of 2,400 A3 sheets an hour, or 80 A4 pages a minute.

The printer can personalise or customise jobs, and has a fine detail reproduction with 1,200x4,800dpi with low-temperature or high-gamut toner.

A fifth channel on the Linoprint can be used for white or clear. Melbourne says fluorescent and metallic colours are under development, and said he hoped they would be added to the range soon. 

Nine-staff Palm Print, which has a turnover of £1m, will focus on marketing this new offering over the next year.

“The opportunities it opens for creative designers are unbelievable and we will be demonstrating its capabilities to existing and potential customers,” said Melbourne. “We want to involve agencies and designers, not just the account executives.”

The CV 80 will join the company’s Konica C8000, Ricoh C901 and Roland XC540 wide-format presses. The 901 will act as a back up for the CV 80 until the service contract ends in a year’s time. 

The company is looking to offer more on-demand printing alongside its more traditional business, which has focused on variable data printing. Currently looking into some short-run packaging work, the company predicts new markets will open up after this £70,000 investment.

Holding both local and national accounts, Palm Print offers various finishing services alongside its digital and signage offerings. Further expansion would be based on volumes and capacity according to Melbourne.

Family company Galloways also installed the Linoprint CV in January, aiming to make a mark in web-to-print and variable data work.