"We didn’t get to go," he laments. "We tried, but we were dealing with several different designers and not one of them came up with a ticket for us. It would have been good to attend, not that I am into the music scene that much, but it would have been great to go to such a big event in the city."

Beckinsale had got the job to print marketing collateral for the event following a "cheeky email" to MTV head office as soon as he heard the awards were coming to his hometown. The fact MTV called back marked just how far the company had come on since setting up with a single Konica Minolta digital press only four years previously.

"My father and brother had been running an advertising company for 20 years called Media Design, while I worked at a local printers," explains Beckinsale. "I decided I wanted to set up on my own in the print business and my brother and father suggested making it part of their business. I agreed and we became Media Design and Print."

Stable growth
Since then, Beckinsale has gone from three staff to 10 and added kit as and when he required it. A Xerox 700 purchase was followed by a Canon imagePrograf IPF8000 and an IPF820, and the company is about to install a Konica Minolta bizhub Pro 6500. On the finishing side, it’s been the same story, with Duplo folders and creasers and Renz binders added to the arsenal.

The most recent addition to this growing stable of kit is a Matrix 370 laminator, which was installed in October last year.

"We were having to outsource a lot of lamination and that was adding a couple of days to the turnaround times we could offer," he explains. "While our clients were not really putting the squeeze on us, we felt that for service and speed it would be better to do it in-house."

To assess the options available to him, Beckinsale crossed to the mainland to attend last year’s Northprint exhibition in Harrogate. He discovered that many of the laminators on show were too big for his needs, but fortunately he spied the Matrix 370, which he says is perfect for the digital print market. 

"When we saw the Matrix, we immediately realised that its proportions were more what we were after," says Beckinsale. "We saw it again at a print show in Ireland and it was clearly suited for the digital side of things."

That’s not to say the company made the purchase immediately. Beckinsale says there were other options and various suppliers to choose from.

"We did toy initially with the idea of a UV coater, but although the end-result looked very similar, the difference seemed to be that the lamination was just that much tougher," he explains.

"When we did decide on the laminator, we shopped around a bit, but we did end up getting the machine through the supplier that was demonstrating it at the show."

That supplier was DBC Ireland, a Dublin-based distributor for the Matrix range of laminators, which are manufactured by UK company Vivid. The machine was installed, set up and was running "within a few hours", according to Beckinsale. He explains that the machine is very easy to use so only required very basic training.

The Matrix 370 runs at a top speed of 10m per minute and can handle film widths of up to 340mm and sheets of up to 420mm long. It is a single-side laminator, takes 10 minutes to warm up and has a temperature range 0-140°C. Unlike some of the other Matrix laminators (the 460 and 650), the 370 offers automatic sheet separation, something Beckinsale says is a massive point in its favour.

"One of the biggest bonuses of it is that it automatically separates the sheets," he explains. "Otherwise, it you would need a staff member to stand there separating the sheets manually. That makes it a two-man operation, which obviously adds cost and takes time."

As far as Beckinsale could tell, the build quality of his new machine was pretty good and there didn’t seem to be much that could go wrong with it, so he wasn’t expecting any problems. And, indeed, since installation, the Matrix has performed without incident.

Speed needs
Beckinsale estimates he uses it at least every other day. And, while the machine is capable of running at 10m/minute, it’s not always necessary.

"You can go run at fairly slow speed, which is quite good if you are not in a mad rush to get the work out," he explains. "It means you don’t have to be on the ball with getting the sheets through. Sometimes you just don’t need the higher speeds."

However, sometimes you do need the speed, and having that capability has meant Beckinsale has been able to accept work he was previously having to turn down.

"We did a job recently where we had to get a job matt laminated in a very tight time scale and if we hadn’t had the laminator in-house we would not have been able to do it," he reveals.

He explains that lamination is not necessarily something clients think about automatically, but when the company recommends it for a job, the client very rarely turns down the opportunity.

"When we had to outsource it, we did not really push it that much, because it was a bit of a hassle," he adds. "Now, however, we always offer the lamination option and most people do take it up."

For those customers that were already getting lamination services with Media Design And Print, Beckinsale says the cost savings of bringing the service in-house have been passed on. He explains that he is able to do this as the machine is such good value for money and the return on investment is extremely quick.

"I think the machine really does pay for itself," he says. "You can run two different films, standard or digital film. The digital film is twice the price, but it is still very economical to run."

Economical at digital run lengths, that is. Beckinsale says that if a lamination job came in for 1,000 sheets or more, he would outsource the job as it would not be cost-effective to run it on the Matrix 370. Hence, he would not recommend this model for litho printers. However, being a digital printer, those sort of run lengths are pretty rare and numbers tend to be in the 250-500 bracket for which, he says, the Matrix 370 is perfect.

Indeed, he concludes that the Matrix 370 has been the perfect purchase for the company in every way. It has saved money, expanded the company’s services and enabled it to better serve clients. Beckinsale says he couldn’t ask for anything more – apart from, of course, a ticket to this year’s MTV awards.

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