Freestyle Designs in Bath has taken the UK’s first Agfa Anapurna Ciervo H3200 and will act as a beta site for the printer which was unveiled at Fespa Global earlier this year.
Jayson Godridge, who established Freestyle Designs in 2008, first saw the 3.2m wide Anapurna Ciervo hybrid inkjet printer under NDA in late 2023, and in January 2024 his team revisited Antwerp to see the machine. An order for the machine was placed in March, and it was installed in April at a total investment of £200,000.
“In 2021, we bought our first Agfa hybrid printer to replace an old flatbed Mimaki machine that we had outgrown. At the time, we chose the smaller 2.5m Agfa Anapurna model due to space limitations in our old location. This new printer was a game changer for us, offering robust performance and significantly increased capacity compared to the old press, without any sacrifice in quality,” said Godridge. “When we relocated to our current larger premises 18 months ago, we brought the 2.5m Anapurna with us. However, as our business expanded, we needed a printer that could handle larger materials and improve our print speeds. One area we focused on was single piece wallcoverings, so we began to look into machines that could handle up to 3m to avoid seams in the material.
“After conducting thorough research and considering various options, we narrowed our choices down to EFI and Agfa. Ultimately, we went with the new Agfa Anapurna Ciervo because it was faster, used less ink, and we were already familiar with the Agfa system. We were also impressed by the quality, perfect for some of our detailed POS work, which could still be produced at speed.”
Godridge said the new printer has improved output quality at higher speeds, increased productivity and enabled the company to bring more work in-house.
