CMYKHUB INVESTS IN INKJET AT DRUPA

Australia's largest wholesale printer, CMYKhub, has made its first inkjet investment, by acquiring two Canon varioPrint iX3200 cutsheet presses at drupa.

The trade-only operation is looking at providing even faster turnarounds to its customer base, and will use the new printers for multiple applications, including documents and leisure books.

CEO Dayne Nankervis said, “We’ll start by running lighter weight, uncoated and document-based stocks through the iX3200 for letterheads, books and textbooks, and in time transition across more higher coverage products, such as leisure books, a sector that we want to break into.

“We trust the technology and we see some great benefits – the print quality is exceptionally high with vibrant colours, and it is consistent on every substrate. As a B3 printer, it also delivers an excellent level of productivity. And it’s also so easy to run, and has an intuitive user interface. I can understand why it has such high uptime too, as it’s a simple machine designed well.

“For CMYKhub, this purchase in the Canon varioPrint is our first step into inkjet, but if it works well for our production environment, we could see a further investment in the future."

CMYKhub has been on a two-year research programme to find the inkjet technology that best suited its needs. Nankervis said, “We were already a Canon customer as we have a number of their wide format Colorado devices, and so have been following its cutsheet inkjet development.

“We had the varioPrint iX3200 on our list as a potential investment, we carefully considered a number of other inkjet printers as well, of course, but after rigorous testing that included factory and customer visits, it became clear that the iX3200 was the press for us."

The iX3200 inkjet will give CMYKhub the speed it wants, it will produce 4500 SRA3 4/4 sheets per hour, which is 320 A4ipm. According to Canon the presses have more than 90 per cent average uptime. The press prints at 1200 x 1200 dpi, on media from 60gsm to 350gsm.

Craig Nethercott, managing director, Canon Production Printing Oceania, said, “I’m delighted that CMYKhub, Australia’s leading wholesale printer, has chosen the Canon varioPrint iX3200 as its first investment in cutsheet inkjet technology. The press is a well tried and tested platform that hundreds of our customers rely on to profitably service the requirements of their customers, and I’m confident that it will prove to be the perfect start to their inkjet journey and the catalyst for the next stage in their growth.”

The move into inkjet by CMYKhub highlights the inkjet explosion here at drupa, with a multitude of inkjet presses printing onto every type of substrate available. Those presses come in both sheetfed and roll-fed versions, and represent a huge investment in R&D by the technology developers.