Mainland print company shows why
two works better than one.
Customer demand has seen Caxton become the country’s first business to install a second Fuji Xerox Iridesse digital production press. Bridget Batchelor, managing director at Caxton, says, “We chose our second Iridesse because of the high quality print that we were achieving with the first, it also enables us to keep up with the high demand and fast turnaround. Running two Iridesse presses works better than one. She says, “Having two Iridesses saves time on changing the special colour toners having four colour slots rather than two. Colour matching between the two machines is more accurate and seamless. “Having two Iridesses also enables us to meet those tight delivery requirements with ease that are an essential part of the trade.”
Opening pathways
April 2018 saw the first Fuji Xerox Iridesse arrive at Caxton. The team at Caxton quickly got to grips with the Iridesse’s extraordinary capabilities and, later in the year, Caxton with the help of Fuji Xerox New Zealand hosted a successful open house at its Christchurch premises. She says,
“At the open house, we took the opportunity to showcase all that Caxton could do, which included highlighting the Iridesse to clients, advertising agencies, corporate companies, and colleagues in the industry. “We had over 300 people attend the open house and Fuji Xerox’s contribution went a long way to making it a huge success.” At the open house, a mix of professionals across several sectors got to see up close what the Iridesse could do. The Iridesse’s capabilities encourage designers and creatives to look for innovative ways to help clients with printed material. She says, “The Iridesse has opened pathways for our design team to produce new and extraordinary results with the quality of the machine and the instant results we get from it.”
Caxton has produced award winning work with its first Iridesse. This includes five gold medals at the Pride in Print Awards, as well as the Fuji Xerox PIXI Special Exhibition first place award this year. She adds, “We have creatively used the Iridesse to print a number of embellished pieces including invitations, small run packaging and personalised direct mail campaigns, just to name a few.”
Printing six colours at up to 120ppm, the Fuji Xerox Iridesse prints banner sheets of 729mm (two-sided) and 1200mm (one sided) and will handle paper weight from 52 to 400 gsm. It handles a range of media from plain and coated paper to variations of specialty paper (coloured paper, aluminised paper, films, envelopes, embossed paper, and so on). At the front end, the 10-bit image processing of the new GX print server delivers improved image quality of 1200 x 1200dpi. Other features include the ability to automatically distinguish texts and images and manage them on an object basis; it will process images at high speed while maintaining image quality.
Finding the way ahead
Everyone would like to find some certainty in the current business environment, but can we protect ourselves totally? Batchelor says, “We have learned that you can never 100 per cent future proof your business. There will always be something unexpected such as earthquakes and Covid-19.
“You always need to ensure you are in a position to gather information and act accordingly when required. Having said that we are always looking for opportunities to diversify. For example, we are putting some focus on paperbased packaging and signage and the Iridesse forms part of that focus.
“Covid-19 is currently our biggest challenge due to the uncertainty of the economy and the potential for resurgence. Another issue is unrealistic low pricing which does not bear any relation to true costs and we need to deal with misinformation about the environmental impact of printing and paper.”
Caxton has strategies in place to overcome these challenges. She says, “We need to target different markets; business lost from travel and tourism needs to be replaced by other sectors that have either not been affected as heavily or have started to recover.”
“Keeping our workflow as efficient as possible keeps costs down so that we can offer competitive and realistic prices in a competitive market. Our people and service are key in keeping our current clients loyal to us. Making their lives as easy as possible is important and helping our clients that are struggling during the recovery phase will pay off in the next few years.
“We are also being flexible, ensuring we have a good online presence and diversity. We believe in educating clients and promoting the sustainability of paper and print.
Caxton understands its advantages. She says, “We offer a wide range of different marketing tools that are necessary for the changing climate. Trying all the time to think of ways to help our customers use these to their best advantages.
“The ever changing technology, as we have with the Iridesse, is also to our benefit. “As well as the everyday digital work such as business cards, books and so on, the Iridesse gives us the ability to produce a much more comprehensive range of speciality work with the metallic, white and fluoro toners.
“We see digital advertising and social media saturating our inboxes. However, we believe a tangible, printed message holds more value in the current climate.”
Partners in print
Caxton has worked with Fuji Xerox New Zealand for 27 years. She says, “We have good relationships with the whole team at Fuji Xerox and would like to take this opportunity to thank their technicians for the service they provide. We work together with a common goal, the more uptime of the presses, the more work we can get through being beneficial for us both.
“We received many resources, information sheets and samples from Fuji Xerox, helping with the best practices for the metallics and whites when they first came in. We are hoping to receive this same advice for the pink fluoro on best ways to use the toner for us to pass on to our clients and designers.” Companies like Caxton represent a bright future for printing in New Zealand. She says, “Digital has proven, especially during uncertain times, to remain steady and be more affordable when there are budget cuts. We always look at ways to diversify and find that digital and wide format printing remains a huge growth area.”
Contact one of the team to find out more, get quotes and see how we can help get your business back on track.
