Melbourne school photographer SchoolPix is upgrading to a new HP Indigo 7900 from Currie Group, and anticipates diversifying its business thanks to the machine's flexibility, speed and quality.
The new digital press will replace the company's Indigo 5600 to perform the majority of its printing work from July, says founder and owner Tony Wouters. "The outstanding, high quality photographic prints will boost our core business, while the versatility of substrates the HP Indigo 7900 can print on now has us looking more seriously at other sectors.
"It will continue to do exactly what the 5600 is doing at the moment – it’ll just do it better. The 7900 will give us the potential to look at products we can’t do at the moment, so it’ll open up opportunities for us to expand into areas outside school photos such as posters, calendars, diaries, yearbooks and potentially even cookbooks. It has the flexibility to do a wide gamut of products," Wouters said.
Wouters says the increase in speed and quality, plus automatic reading of images and easier maintenance requirements, helped sell him on the 7900. "It will potentially have more uptime, and it'll be easier for our staff to maintain themselves. It’ll help keep up the high standard that we already provide," he said.
SchoolPix, a family-owned business, has expanded over the past 35 years to its current size of approximately 90 staff. "The photography season is a lot like other seasonal sectors – most of our work is handled in the first six months of the year. We do very little in the way of commercial printing, and we support a number of other photographers with their requirements," Wouters said.
Wouters says the service his company receives from Currie Group is a great help for SchoolPix's business. "I’m very impressed with Currie Group as a supplier. They’re in my mind outstanding," he said.