Delta Group adds third EFI printer for display graphics
Print Solutions
The first UK company to install an EFI Nozomi, and now the first in the world to have three Nozomi presses under one roof, The Delta Group has invested in a Nozomi 14000 SD single pass printer for sign and display. This printer adds to the two previous Nozomi acquisitions, a C18000 printer for corrugated and a 18000+ LED printer for sign and display.
The 14000 SD printer was designed to specifically meet the needs of the sign and display graphics market, giving users the opportunity to significantly improve speed to market and increase profitability with a wide range of substrates and brilliant colour quality.
The Delta Group, in business for more than 35 years, is headquartered in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. It has four other locations around the UK, including Dublin, Ireland.
‘With our distributed platform, we receive orders centrally and distribute them to the site best suited for the type of work required,’ said Martin Shipp, the group’s chief operating officer. ‘Meeting the customer’s requested delivery date is paramount to us.’
‘In our main facility,’ he continued, ‘we had 13 flatbeds running, and each flatbed requires a space the size of a tennis court to have sufficient working space around it. But with the Nozomis being up to five or six times faster than even the fastest multi-pass machines, we have been able to reduce our flatbed footprint down to about five across our network.’
Martin explained that the company has an efficient workflow in place, including customer facing portals, and many jobs run through automatically where the first human touch is taking the prints off the back end of the printer, with some 500 orders per day being printed in this way. He also noted that whereas in the past, the company would produce overruns of a dozen or more in case some sheets had defects. Thanks to the in line quality control cameras on the Nozomi printers, he said, they now only run one or two sheets over.
Key drivers for The Delta Group in shifting from offset and flatbeds to Nozomi printers were the shortened turn times and run lengths. Martin explained, ‘Historically, retailers would order run lengths of 3000 or more, suitable for offset. But now, instead of campaigns having five different items with a couple thousand of each, we are more commonly seeing campaigns that contain 250 different items with an order quantity of around 500 each. So, it has really pushed the transition from analogue to digital for the group.’
The Nozomi 14000 SD is on display at EFI’s drupa stand in hall 9, A20-1.
