The Downpatrick, Northern Ireland-based company bought the printer as part of a wider £30,000-plus investment, which also saw it invest in a Xerox digital colour press, GAPS UK cold laminator, and a range of small-scale, wide-format-specific finishing kit, including eyeleting equipment.
The company decided to enter the wide-format market after co-owners, brothers Gavin and Alan Oakes, spotted a strikingly branded van belonging to wide-format supplier Dennis D Evans and requested a brochure.
“It was so eye-catching, so I just knocked on the window and said ‘have you got a brochure?’” said Gavin Oakes.
The company also considered a Roland DG printer but opted for the Mimaki because “we thought the Mimaki was as good if not better than the Roland but at a fraction of the price,” according to Oakes.
The Mimaki CJV30-100’s workload includes window graphics, pavements signs, pop-up banners and vehicle graphics.
“Customers are just lapping up the fact we can do all this stuff and they don’t have to go to the bigger cities to get it done,” said Oakes.
Plus2Print also runs a Xerox DocuColor 250, Epson Stylus Pro 7880 and a plotter for architectural drawings. The business was established in 1990 by the Oakes brothers’ father and was taken over by them 15 years ago.
The CJV30 Series printer-cutter offers four sizing options from 610mm to 1.6m and production print speeds of 17.5sqm/h. The printer runs with Mimaki’s SS21 fast-drying, outdoor durable inks and comes with RasterLink Pro RIP software, featuring continuous print-and-cut and 16-bit rendering.
