Actors and audience alike ignore the fact that these supposedly impromptu deals – accompanied by the sound of popping corks and the strobe of camera flashes – will have been finalised weeks or months beforehand. It is one of the unspoken truths of trade shows; after all, nobody turns up and buys a press out of the blue anymore, right?
Not usually, but then DCL Print, which snapped up an iGen 150 straight off Xeretec’s stand at last year’s Ipex, is not your usual printer. “We genuinely bought it at the show, which was unexpected even to us, because we didn’t go to buy anything,” says DCL Print group managing director Simon Smode of the surprise purchase.
“We were looking around just to see what new technology and new equipment was there. We looked at wide-format, we looked at litho presses and we went to the Xeretec stand to say hello; they demonstrated the 150 to us and we bought it there and then,” says Smode.
DCL Print already had a longstanding relationship with Xeretec, having bought all of its digital print kit from the Xerox reseller, from its first digital press – a Xerox 6060 installed in 2004 – to its first iGen, an iGen4 Diamond Edition installed four months prior to Ipex 2014. “After we installed the iGen4, Xeretec told us we were likely to knock on their door again in 18 months,” says Smode. “But because of the growth of the work on the iGen4 and the need for back-up in a way, we saw that we would be wise to make an investment there and then.”
Founded as a business forms printer in 1984, Smode bought DCL Print in 2003 and quickly set about diversifying the company’s revenue streams, which today include transactional mailing, security, labels, commercial, display and business forms print. Along the way he took advantage of the consolidation in the business forms sector to grow DCL, acquiring Croydon-based Wilgrove Express first, before buying up the assets and goodwill of Jaguar Business Forms, Western Business Forms, Action Print and Orchestra Print’s Wotton-under-Edge facility.
Today DCL operates from two sites, Crawley and Wotton-under-Edge, and runs a total of 27 presses, including 18 litho, one flexo and eight digital presses (soon to be nine when its Xerox Rialto arrives this autumn). The firm employs 66 staff and has a turnover of around £7m, a quarter of which comes from a sector the firm wasn’t even involved in four years ago.
“Transactional has grown from nothing to 25% over three years – it’s been spectacular,” says Smode, adding that this growth was the spark that led to the iGen 150 install. “We realised after seeing the demonstration that it would be wise to invest, not just to take on the additional work that that growth was generating, but also to act as a back-up for the iGen4.
“We’ve subsequently bought a Xerox J75 to act as a back-up for that, so we bought a back-up and we’ve bought a back-up for the back-up and all those presses are busy everyday so it’s quite exciting.”
Customer demands
All this talk of back-ups is not to say that there have been any reliability issues with either iGen, quite the opposite; rather, Smode says that for a lot of financial services clients it is a prerequisite that you have a back-up print capability. “These machines haven’t broken down since we’ve had them,” said Smode. “We do all the day-to-day maintenance ourselves and they’ve had the occasional need for an engineer to come in, but we do a million clicks a quarter on the iGens and in relation to the number of clicks, the amount of downtime we’ve had has been very little.
“But if you do work for financial institutions it’s very important you have two or three of everything in different sites so you can act quickly if anything went wrong. That’s why we try to mirror the two sites, so we have some digital equipment in Gloucestershire – two Xerox 700s and two Nuveras – which is used everyday and also means we can switch the work across in the event of any disasters.”
That said Smode has always invested in service contracts for his digital presses and his current agreement with Xerox includes two-hour callout on all the company’s digital kit across both sites. “It’s a very good response,” says Smode. “We’ve always invested in service contracts and I wouldn’t advise to invest in any digital machinery without a good service contract simply because it pays in the long run. All our operators are also trained to do all of the minor maintenance themselves and everyday there’s a process to go through – it’s a discipline you have to have but if you look after the equipment it will look after you.”
Smode lists the main benefits of the iGen 150 as its speed, which at 150 A4 pages per minute is over a third faster than the 110ppm iGen4 Diamond, as well as its quality and ease of maintenance. The 150 also presented an advantage in stock flexibility, with Smode reporting that it could handle certain types of third-party stock – particularly gloss papers with a very smooth finish – better than the iGen4. He adds that the internal spectrophotometer and colour management tools means the firm has had no problems with achieving or maintaining colour across runs.
Colour correct
“We’re doing some fantastic work on these iGens and although we’re experts, sometimes it’s a challenge to see any difference between the litho and the digital result. There’re no issues on colour variance, because we’ve made sure everything is calibrated right and that things match. Although the work that we do litho one month we would tend to leave on litho the next, it would be no issue to match that on a digital press. One of the key features of this press is its consistency,” says Smode. “The other is the fact that you can print 640mm wide, which allows us to do six-page A4, folders and so on. It’s also very user-friendly; there’s obviously some technical training necessary but our operators have all had the proper training and are very competent. It’s very easy to run those machines and learn the processes.”
While Smode could not fault the iGen 150 in terms of its performance or reliability, his one piece of advice to anyone thinking of purchasing one was stock-related. “I think it’s important to get the stocks right,” he says. “When the stock you select to run through there is right, it’s very efficient; but it did take a while for us to work out exactly the right stocks to run through the presses – probably about four to six weeks – and that mainly comes down to two elements: one is curl and the other is jamming.”
Given his paper merchanting background, other less-experienced users might take longer to identify their preferred stock, but Smode says the effort is worthwhile for longer runs where a significant saving can mount up versus the Xerox-approved stocks.
“If we’re printing business cards on 350gsm, that’s where we tend to use Xerox grades, because it works well and we’ve not really spent time looking for alternatives for those sorts of small to medium runs; but for longer runs – mainly transactional work – we’ve identified a pre-print grade that works very well, which is what we use as our house grade.”
Unsurprisingly, given their long relationship, Smode is full of praise for Xeretec, who will also supply the firm’s next Xerox – a Rialto 900 reel-to-sheet inkjet press, which is due to arrive in September. “I would recommend the iGen to other printers without hesitation and I would even say buy from Xeretec,” he says. “Xeretec themselves have had phenomenal growth in the UK and they serve Xerox very well, they also understand our business – they know where we’ve come from, where we are now and what we’re trying to achieve – they’re a true partner.”
While the firm’s next investment will take it into the brave new world of inkjet – an area where DCL is likely to make more acquisitions before long – for now Smode couldn’t be happier with his Ipex impulse buy: “It’s been tremendous to support the growth of short-run commercial print and variable data work and it’s made us more efficient, which means we’re able to operate on better margins, so it’s good all round, really.”
SPECIFICATIONS
Max sheet size 364x660mm
Speed 150 A4 pages per minute
Number of colours 4
Stock weight range 60-350gsm uncoated; 90-350gsm cover
List price £500,000
Contact Xeretec 0800 074 8136 www.xeretec.co.uk
COMPANY PROFILE
Headquartered in Crawley, West Sussex and with a second site in Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, DCL Print is a £7m turnover, privately-owned print group. Founded as a business forms printer in 1984, it was acquired by Simon Smode in 2003 and made its first digital investment the following year. Since then the firm has grown via acquisition and diversified into commercial, security, labels, transactional and display work.
Why was it bought…
DCL Print bought its iGen 150 at Ipex 2014, four months after its first iGen, to support the company’s growth in transactional print, which had grown from nothing to 25% of turnover in the past three years, and to act as a back-up for its existing iGen4 Diamond Edition. A subsequent investment in a Xerox Rialto 900 inkjet press is expected to free up more capacity on the two iGens for short-run commercial work, while the Rialto focuses on variable data transactional.
How has it performed…
Smode says the iGen 150 has done everything promised and more, making the firm more efficient while allowing it to print six-page A4 digitally on a single sheet. He adds that the press and its sister machine the iGen4 Diamond have been highly reliable in the face of the million clicks per quarter volume that each is doing. As a result, Smode woudn’t hesitate to recommend either the Xerox press or its supplier Xeretec.
