Print Solutions
Konica Minolta Business Solutions (UK) has supplied Nottingham based print and direct mail specialist Eight Days a Week Print Solutions with its AccurioPress C14000 and IQ-501 Intelligent Quality Care unit. The new solution delivers 38% higher speeds and improved quality, along with increased paper stock options.
A large percentage of Eight Days a Week’s output is high quality mail, with 90% being sent through the post. With its incumbent inkjet print solution suitable for low ink coverage and higher volume applications, the company had reassessed its commercial and operational needs before seeking an additional device to expand capacity. As the short run, high quality workload increased it became clear that the existing sole toner based colour device could not cope with the throughput.
Lance Hill, managing director of Eight Days a Week, commented: ‘The Konica Minolta solution is running 38% quicker and the quality is better. We can use a broader range of substrates, with much heavier stock as we can go up to 450 grams. This in turn gives us more options in terms of jobs we can do and customers we can work with. We can also print on bigger sheet sizes too, which again gives a wider range of options we can offer our customers.’
As Konica Minolta’s flagship cut sheet colour toner model, the AccurioPress C14000 delivers unprecedented print quality, amazing media flexibility and the highest degree of automation. With speeds of up to 140 pages per minute and with three 900 mm feeders, the AccurioPress C14000 expertly tackles a variety of print jobs with consistency, reliability, ease, and efficiency on a wide array of media.
The IQ-501 Intelligent Quality Care unit takes automation of print to the next level by ensuring smart, powerful, and automated adjustments for image position, registration and 100% accurate colour control, with hybrid colour measurement and real time correction for printed output. Together, the AccurioPress C14000 and the IQ-501 provides Eight Days a Week with the perfect combination to complete tasks ranging from high coverage, high quality jobs that require heavy stock, to print on demand jobs or high volume orders, which can see as many as 15 to 20 switches a day to fulfil customer orders.
Lance added, ‘Increased quality is another major benefit. The IQ-501 unit scans every sheet and we see straight away where a problem is – something which none of the other manufacturers have the ability to do. Traditionally, if you were running a job you weren’t noticing the quality issue until you pulled the stack off the machine, flick through it and see the problem. You would then have to go back through and trace the issue, which is time consuming, wasteful, and costly. This is a big plus point for the Konica Minolta solution.’
The new solution has proven to be ideal for meeting customer demands, as Lance commented, ‘The fact that we can load different papers, almost at the touch your button to switch between yields very quickly, is important for us. With the ability to use bigger sheet sizes the company can consider additional areas such as point of sale or short run packaging, or small format packaging.
‘It is helping us to diversify in what we do. We have already seen the impact of what it can achieve but I think there is a lot more we can do to push it into other areas.’
