This ethos has very much come into its own in relation to the work FE Burman does with graphic and fine art university students. “I get called into new clients and think ‘how on earth do they know about us?’ and I’ll see a friendly face smiling saying ‘hi, do you remember me?’ and it’s always a student,” he reports.

So FE Burman’s approach of spending plenty of time and creative energy on the St Martins, LSC and Camberwell students the company’s central London location attracts, certainly pays off. 

As does the company’s ethos of constant creativity and innovation more generally. “I often show some of the creative paper companies such as GF Smith, Fedrigoni and Antalis the work a student has produced. And that sometimes means we have to run overs in order to do so,” reports Regan of how creatively exciting these student jobs can be.

The company’s publishing, creative agency, property and museum clients also appreciate FE Burman’s envelope-pushing ways. And they also very much appreciate the capabilities of the printer’s latest bit of kit, an HP Indigo 7600, installed a year ago.

The new press was brought in to complement an existing Indigo 7000. Although the company looked at other options, FE Burman, which also runs two B2 KBA 74 Karat litho presses and offers a range of other services such as mailing, design and multi-channel marketing, has always been an HP house, reports Regan.

“As much as we looked around, such as at the Xerox iGen and Kodak machines, we knew deep down Indigo would be the kit we’d buy,” says Regan.

The main reason was the quality on offer. “The reason we’re an HP house is purely down to print quality. It’s down to looking through a loupe and seeing what you would see looking down a loupe at a litho-printed sheet,” says Regan, who reports that the 7000 the company runs replaced an Indigo 3000 when it was installed around seven or eight years ago. 

He adds: “The other important thing is that the ink dries straight away, so you don’t get any loss of colour saturation into the paper – you get an amazingly vibrant appearance. It still sits in the paper so you don’t get this terrible varnished look which a lot of digital has.”

Another key reason was the format of the 7000 Indigo family. “The sheet size of the 7000 is great; it’s slightly bigger than previous models,” says Regan. “So if you’re printing a cover that’s got a reasonable spine on it, you can print the front and back cover and the spine together, and the spine can be a reasonable thickness.

“And you can get a lot more greetings cards on a sheet by having the extra width of the 7000 series,” he adds.

New tricks

So the 7600 was mainly purchased to bolster FE Burman’s capacity for the types of high-quality jobs the 7000 was already running. But the 7600 does also offer a few nifty new features.

One of these is a special sensor system that is better at detecting darker substrates. “On other machines, when you’re printing on dark paper and applying white ink you can have an issue with the sensors because they can’t sense if the sheet’s coming through. So you have to put a white strip on the dark papers, which has cost implications,” says Regan. “But the 7600 allows you to put a lot of different papers through whether they’re transparent or dark.”

Another attraction of the 7600 is its clear varnish for creating tactile and decorative watermarks. “Various clients use this, whether property or fashion customers,” reports Regan. “It’s the ability to turn a normal, well designed front cover of a brochure or invitation into something a little bit more special without going down the spot varnish or clear foil route. It gives you total control on the press.”

Regan cites a Christmas cracker job for London retailer Liberty as a project the company is particularly proud of. “It was very intricate and used high-build clear varnish. The pattern was taken from the chimney tops from the Liberty store. That was on very uncoated paper, which added to the challenge.”

Another interesting job using this capability was a recent print run of Condé Nast’s Love magazine. “There was a lot of photography and creative work inside and they wanted a larger size because of that,” reports Regan. “Throughout there was clear varnish on certain pages, highlighting certain bits of text.”

One bit of advice Regan would give about this capability, however, is: “it only works really really well when it’s very narrow, as in the size of the vector file you’re putting down. When it gets too thick it doesn’t work so well.

“But that’s clearly stated by HP,” he points out.

Breaking boundaries

Such an innovative approach to invitation, magazine, student project and greetings card work, does push FE Burman’s machines to their limits, reports Regan. 

“We don’t take a huge amount of notice of the papers HP certify. If our client wants to try things, we’re certainly up for trying things. If anything we try to discourage them from using silk and gloss and getting a basic result. We strongly believe people should be producing artful pieces.”

With such creativity inevitably comes more service calls, says Regan. “HP marketing love us, but I think the engineers find us quite painful at times!” he says. 

“These machines have so much technology in them that you’ve always got issues. But we’re challenging the machine; we’re putting a lot of uncoated papers through, a lot of different materials. I must stress that we push these machines really hard.”

And the company has been delighted with the strong support HP has continued to offer FE Burman. “HP installed it very fast, and gave very decent support over a weekend to stop any impact on production,” says Regan.

With both machines very busy – the 7000 doing more general work, the 7600 the more creative jobs – FE Burman is very happy with its latest Indigo. “We bring new customers in all the time, we’re very lucky,” says Regan, adding: “Turnover’s increased and the creative work has grown.” 

Two other features of the 7600 that others might want to factor in if considering investing, are its embossing and three colour printing capabilities, says Regan. 

“There’s also an embossing feature on there. We don’t use it much because most of our clients still go down the traditional routes,” he says. 

“And it can print in three colours not four. Indigos work on a click charge where you get charged per colour, so if you print three both sides rather than four each side it’s a way of saving ink,” he adds, reporting FE Burman doesn’t use this feature either, but that it might be handy for some.

The features the company does use on a daily basis however – namely the clear varnish, white ink and ability to handle a wide range of stocks – it loves. Armed with a strong can-do ethos and passion for creativity, FE Burman is not only making customers happy today, but ensuring work comes its way in future too. 

SPECIFICATIONS

Max speed 120 4-col A4 ppm 2-up, (160ppm in Enhanced Productivity Mode)

Max resolution 2,438dpi 

Line screens 144, 160, 175, 180 lpi

Max sheet size 330x483mm

Stock weight range 80-400gsm

Print servers HP SmartStream Production Pro Print Server, HP SmartStream Ultra Print Server

Footprint 5.4x2.3m

Price £550,000

Contact HP 01344 363368 www.hp.com

Company profile 

FE Burman was founded in 1958 with the aim of providing high-quality, colour pre-press services. The company then evolved with the times, installing electronic scanning in the 1960s, electronic page systems in the 1980s, digital printing in the 1990s, dry offset printing and, more recently, data access and supply systems and web-to-print services. The business’s current offering ranges from design to mailing for a range of blue-chip clients.

Why it was bought...

Although the company looked at other machines, including from Xerox and Kodak, it decided to continue its long association with HP when looking to boost capacity. The HP Indigo 7600’s high-quality output, ability to handle a wide range of stocks, sensors for printing on dark and transparent substrates, and its clear varnish feature, were all factors.   

How it has performed...

True to form, HP has delivered a great machine, reports director Paul Regan. The press went though a bedding-in period and any servicing issues are related to how hard the company works the machine. But these have been nothing untoward, reports Regan, who describes the 7600 as “fantastic”.