The printer, which the company plans to reveal after the service has been in operation for a few months, will digitally print within one day. An order received by 5pm on a weekday will be printed the next weekday and dispatched to arrive by the following weekday, Saxoprint said.
UK-based senior key account manager Philip Foster said: “The thing we’ve noticed over the past 18 months is we’re getting amazing feedback about the quality and the pricing of our service but a lot of the feedback said we’re just a day or two not quick enough. We’ve been aware of it for some time but we didn’t want to jump into offering a quicker service and for it to affect quality.”
Foster said Saxoprint and the UK printer had been in negotiations for months to hammer out the details.
Philip Foster said: “What we realised we needed to do is to offer a service to be able to compete. The difficulty is to be able to offer that service in Dresden. We’ve been months and months in negotiations on prices and other matters.
“Pricing works for the client rather than us - it’s not a loss leader but it’s something we needed to offer. We want people to realise that we can offer them what they need without going elsewhere.”
Previously Saxoprint’s standard service was five days on production and two days’ delivery while an express offering printed in three days, with a two-day delivery window. The company also offered the option for clients to pay for overnight delivery to the UK using air freight, but this is expensive, especially on bulk orders.
It is now also offering its previous express service as standard, on all orders except stitched or perfect-bound books, after improving efficiency and the UV drying process at its 18,000sqm offset facility in Dresden, Germany.
“We thought there’s still a certain amount of work clients really need and they really need quickly, especially the London market. There are a lot of people in London that can just go to a copy shop and say we need this tomorrow and they can do it for them. We wanted to compete with that," Foster said.
During the initial roll-out, the product range available is limited and includes flyers, folded leaflets, business cards, letterheads and greetings cards, which may provide a good income stream nearer Christmas.
But Foster said Saxoprint would review the range depending on demand. He said the service, which mainly appeals to Saxoprint’s reseller customers, and was deliberately launched during the quieter summer period, had already been popular.
“We’ve had lots of orders already and we believe that once September and October come along we’ll see a lot more. The great thing about Saxoprint is we like to test everything. We’ve gone for this option during the quietest part of the year.”
Saxoprint's UK sales rose to £5.4m during the 2014 calendar year from £4.3m in 2013.
It has invested almost €20m in new equipment since 2011 and announced earlier this month that it had reduced its CO2 emissions by 14.6% at its Dresden headquarters, where 500 people work. It claims that its printing process uses 70% less CO2 than traditional printing. It also no longer uses alcohol Isopropanol or mineral oils, and chooses carbon-neutral shipping options such as DPD Total Zero and UPS Carbon Neutral.
