UK commercial print company Shiremoor Press has installed a Konica Minolta AccurioPress C7090 as part of an updated production environment, which includes a growing amount of proofing and short runs of packaging.
Based in Newcastle, Shiremoor was founded in the late 1960s as a one-man letterpress printing company. Since then the company has entered new markets and added additional production capabilities, including adding digital with a Konica Minolta bizhub Press C1085 in 2015. In addition to digital the company also prints using a five-colour SRA2 litho press and numerous wide format machines.
The initial Konica Minolta press is to be maintained by Shiremoor as a back up machine to the newly installed AccurioPress C7090 model, supplied by SOS. This new machine represents additional capacity for the company, which is looking to access more of the market for proofing and short production runs in the packaging sector.
Shiremoor Press operations director Joe Burke said, ‘We are familiar with Konica Minolta, which was an advantage for them, but when we’re making an investment we always check every option. Our research concluded that C7090 was the right machine for u. The first is the quality of the print this machine can produce, which is exceptional, but most importantly those results can be achieved quickly, reliably and consistently. We specified the C7090 with KM’s IQ-501 unit, which offers fast setups and will colour correct on-the-fly, and also offers back-to-back registration which has been an issue in the past.
‘Our workload is extremely diverse, which means stock flexibility was important. The C7080 will print an extra long sheet enabling six-page A4, but most importantly will duplex thicker materials up to 400gsm which is ideal for our carton manufacturing.’
He continued, ‘Cross platform consistency was another issue that SOS has solved for us. SOS sent a colour specialist to make that happen, he looked at our pre-press, CtP, litho and digital to calibrate our entire operation to Fogra 51 standards. As it happens, the Konica Minolta was the most accurate machine – SOS made sure the rest of our output was up to the same standard.’
