Solopress eyes wide-format growth with double Agfa investment

Rob Fletcher speaks to Chris Fuller, Head of Ecommerce at Solopress about their double Agfa investment.

Solopress, part of the Onlineprinters group of companies, has purchased two new Agfa Anapurna hybrid UV LED printers in an effort to strengthen its wide-format printing service offering.
 
The Anapurna H2500i LED systems have been in place at Solopress since last month, running 24 hours a day, six days a week, as the print service provider looks to address a sharp increase in demand for wide-format print.
 
Both machines measure in at 2.5m wide and offer twice the printing speed as the devices they replaced, while Agfa’s unique Thin Ink Layer Technology means the cost of ink as halved. In addition, the two printers enable Solopress to print onto rigid products, thus expanding its service offering to customers.
 
Speaking to FESPA.com about the double Agfa investment, Chris Fuller, head of ecommerce at Solopress, has said that the two machines provide the “efficiency, quality and reliability” the company required for its customers.
 
“We were looking at the next step on our wide-format journey and the Agfa Anapurna is quite uniquely positioned as a quality hybrid at the right price point, enabling us to buy two machines for failover and massively increasing our capacity,” Fuller said.
 
“Our wide-format work is a fast-growing area of the business and this equipment gives us the overall productivity we need to meet that demand. It also provides us with the flexibility in order to offer many new products in the coming months.
 
“We decided to invest in two machines rather than one to ensure that there is no disruption in service should one develop an issue. Not letting our customers down is very important to us, and so having two Anapurnas in place is extremely useful.”
 
The move comes after Solopress also recently purchased an Esko Kongsberg C44 flatbed cutter, allowing it to cut the rigid products it is now producing on the new Anapurnas.
 
Plans are also in place to invest in a digital embellishment machine, with Fuller citing the Jetvarnish and iFoil from MGI/Konica Minolta as possible options, as well as a new and a guillotine to give the company extra capacity in production.
 
“All areas of our business are growing, however at the moment wide-format is growing at the fastest rate,” Fuller said. “Additionally we’ve seen significant growth from the promotional/merchandising products we launched earlier in the year.
 
“All in all, it is an exciting time with opportunities in many different areas.”