The 16-year-old Birmingham company spent around £160,000 on the Heidelberg machines, which were installed last month. They replaced a Konica Minolta 8000 press and Agfa Palladio CTP system respectively.
Pinstripe also completed its switch to all-Heidelberg pressroom consumables by adopting Saphira Eco Chem Free 101 plate.
Operations director Paul Stone said the 28-staff company with a £2.2m turnover now had the equipment and capability to add another £800,000 to its turnover in 12 to 18 months.
“Key for us was standardisation; we are a Heidelberg user. The old Konica Minolta machine was good and the Agfa CTP fantastic. But technology moves on and sometimes there's need for change.
“The Linoprint CV has a couple of features we like: it has a extended in-feed so we can produce shorter-run work, such a six-page A4 and A4 landscape jobs, and on stocks from 52gsm to 360gsm.
“The other nice feature is the fifth colour: it will be the white or clear we use more for multiple-page documents in short runs but lots of them for things such as training material – and it is possible to swap between the two in about 10 or 15 minutes.”
He added: “With general commercial work, digital machines take a lot of bashing, running a mixture of paper weights and substrates. The build quality of the new press is very, very good.”
Pinstripe Print Group, which holds ISO 12647-2 certification through the BPIF’s colour-quality management scheme, is undertaking Heidelberg’s ISO 12647-2 certification as well.
Stone said pre-press and press optimisation and testing took place last week with sample sheets from a run of 4,000 submitted to Germany for testing.
He said he liked the Suprasetter's easy manoeuvrability and its reliability as well as its speed, quality, flexibility and environmental credentials. The system will run about 2,000 Saphira chemistry-free plates a month.
Digital printing accounts for 20% of Pinstripe’s turnover and the new investment would raise that percentage and complement the company's five-colour Heidelberg XL 75 litho press, he said.
