HP today announced that pixartprinting, of Venice, Italy, has bolstered its digital printing capabilities as part of an investment programme that includes four HP Indigo 7500 Digital Presses, an HP SmartStream Ultra Print Servers, and two HP Scitex LX600 Printers, using HP Latex Ink technology.
These new HP digital devices enhance the pixartprinting stable that already includes six HP Indigo 7000 Digital Presses, and five HP Scitex LX-series printers. This increased digital capability will be complemented with two new Komori 8-colour conventional presses.
Since its foundation by Matteo Rigamonti in 1994 to offer state-of-the-art DTP, scanning and typesetting services, the company has expanded into general commercial work using advanced web-to-print technologies and automated workflows. Today it has 65,000 customers and turns around 2,500 jobs each day comprising magazines, catalogues, postcards, stickers, labels and brochures. In addition, the company offers high resolution reproductions, posters, billboards, banners, displays, as well as packaging and other print services. Pixartprinting's growth is still increasing with 48 per cent on 2010 over 2009 and 62 per cent April 2011 compared to April 2010.
"For that reason we decide to improve our digital capability. Today pixartprinting's conventional printing business is nine per cent of total turnover," said Matteo Rigamonti, pixartprinting CEO. "Our customers don't care what technology is used to fulfil individual orders. Customer satisfaction is based on the quality of the result; respect for delivery times; and, of course, competitive prices. Considering that the quality of offset and digital prints are pretty much the same, there are no longer problems with uniformity of production."
Managing the powerhouse of conventional presses and ten HP Indigo presses will be Uragano (hurricane), a bespoke print management software programme developed by pixartprinting engineers that uses five parameters to decide whether jobs are to be printed conventionally or digitally: length of run, type of paper and weight, format and delivery times. Jobs to be printed digitally will be sent to the HP SmartStream Ultra Print Server which manages productivity, RIPping and colour management, providing a centralised workflow control that assigns jobs to presses for printing.
As a major European web-to-print company serving a market that requires print on demand and short time delivery, pixartprinting requires efficient and reliable high-volume data processing to ensure a smooth end-to-end workflow.
"The automated process management provided by Uragano and the HP SmartStream Ultra enables us to fully exploit the potential of our presses' capabilities, eliminating waste and inefficiencies," Rigamonti explained. "The result is that the breakeven point is lowered and production is optimised."
The two HP Scitex LX600 Printers and two of the HP Indigo 7500 Digital Presses were installed in April, with the other two and the HP SmartStream Ultra Print Server scheduled for installation early in the summer.
"Recognising that conventional and digital printing technologies are complementary can enable print service providers to leverage a range of leading-edge tools for the customers' benefit as well as their own," Rigamonti said. "We have invested in HP Indigo presses since 2001 and are pleased to add these latest presses to our production capabilities."
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