Sydney wide format printer Next Printing says two Esko Kongsberg cutting tables have helped drive its move into visual merchandising with leading fashion and cosmetic brands.
The company started out 30 years ago as Photo King but over the years witnessed a steady decline in the photographic business.
"As it continued to decline, we made a decision to start up another business as the wide format unit of Photo King and we called it Next Printing," said GM Romeo Sanuri.
Sanuri and MD Tom Tjanaria worked hard to make the company an effective wide format printer. "Things came to a head in 2006 and we approached some companies about buying our first cutting table. We went with an Esko Kongsberg. Our relationship with Esko is now a decade long and we intend to stay with them. In 2010, Next Printing upgraded to an Esko Kongsberg XP 24 cutting table, which offers pretty much double the speed of the XL 24. This is an industrial build machine. It works well for us and we have no major issues in terms of equipment. Plus, we see the team from Esko on a regular basis.
“One of the features that makes the XP 24 so good to run is the software supplied with it. For example, ArtiosCAD allows us to design something to make a 3D structure. In the last three to four years, we have been able to break into this 3D design area where we get a brief from the client which would have been impossible without the software.
“We now do work for a lot of fashion and cosmetic brands. On the exhibition side, we do a lot of work for exhibition builders. We have also done a lot of work for television shows and for stage shows. We are always looking for the latest innovation, the next thing, and we keep aware of the trends in printing, so Next makes sense as a good company name.”
Next Printing - based at St Peters in Sydney's inner west where it employs 30 full-time staff - is one of the few Australasian companies to have won awards at the Fespa trade show. “We won the Fespa silver award for the POS category. We created a giant pop-up card using ReBoard, all cut on the Esko machine," said Sanuri.
Esko’s Kongsberg XP cutting tables cater to modern 3.2m wide format printers. The Kongsberg XP digital cutting table is designed to handle corrugated board and other rigid materials used in packaging, POP products and product display.