Illustrated Stationery adds Acuity Advance to cater for the exotic
A demand for printing onto "exotic" materials has prompted South Wales-based Illustrated Stationery to add an Acuity Advance wide-format printer to its wide-ranging print production facility which includes litho, flexo, rotary letterpress, silkscreen, thermography, hot foil, embossing, die cutting, laser cutting and digital.
Illustrated Stationery, with its staff of 50, is best known for its wedding stationery. As managing director Lino Scaglioni, explained: "More and more of our customers were requesting unique jobs printed on more 'exotic' materials. ?And, with jobs such as wedding stationery, you're talking about relatively short runs of usually about 100. ?Add to this, the growing requirement for one-offs such as themed table plans and we knew that there must be a technology out there to provide cost-effective but high quality print to meet these requirements."
The Acuity Advance has a 2.5 x 1.25m flatbed and uses Fujifilm Sericol's Uvijet series inks (including a white ink option). It is capable of printing onto substrates as thick as 48mm at printing resolutions of 1440dpi with a production speed of 22.2m2/hr.?
"As with any new investment, we predicted that we would make a loss for the first few months of having the machine while we drummed up work for the Acuity, but we made a profit on the machine from month one," said Scaglioni. "We realise the importance of diversifying our offering to meet and exceed customer demands and the addition of the Acuity to our portfolio has allowed us to do this, providing our customers with more choice than ever before."
?