The much admired 160m2 per hour Inca Columbia Turbo revealed at Drupa in May has spent the Olympic summer in beta tests at Image Serigraphics (IS). The company,
which became part of the Image Data Group in March 2003, has been putting the latest development Sericol-distributed machine through its paces. Just two weeks after returning from Düsseldorf to allow for assessment and refurbishment, the first Columbia Turbo was installed in its newly re-furbished premises in Leeds.

Image Data Group employs 250 with sales approaching £30m. Its track record in working on beta tests with manufacturers, together with its willingness to invest – over £5m in the past 12 months - landed IS the first chance to see the Columbia Turbo out of its blocks. The machine joins an extensive stable. In addition to Indigo and Xerox machines, the company has a large base of Komori equipment, including the world’s first installation of a B1 direct imaging press. Image Data bought a Columbia in January 2004.

According to Image Data Group founder and chairman, Roger Birkin,
“ We have a background of beta test work with our chosen suppliers, pushing the barriers back in certain areas. That’s proved to be very successful for us. We have a great deal of experience as a proving ground for innovations.”

The Columbia Turbo is all about quality at speed and is designed to produce large volume graphic display and POP. Since its launch in 2003, the Inca Columbia has set the pace for digital flatbed printing. Meanwhile Inca and Sericol have collaborated further, blending machine design and ink technology to push production speed up to 160m2 an hour. By extending the digital economic print run up to a level that complements screen printing, Sericol claims it offers screen printers a realistic choice of formats depending on application, volume, design and response time.

Faster with no loss of quality
The standard Columbia is calibrated to print at increasing intervals of quality. As print quality increases so does production time in proportion. The Columbia Turbo achieves the same print resolution but at faster speeds. The beta test machine was installed with new standard settings but users can vary these using the on-board software. According to Birkin running the Turbo produces a slightly better quality than the standard Columbia while running three times faster.

This speed has allowed IS to extend the number of full size impressions where digital reaches the cross-over point with screen printing. “With the original Columbia we’re finding the crossover point is around the 70 to 80 copies. Above that you could go to another production method. With the Turbo, we look as if we’re pushing up to and beyond the 200 region, “Birkin confirms.

After buying IS, and as part of a group-wide programme, Image Data Group looked at investing in equipment and initially considered the Inca Eagle, also distributed by Sericol. The company primarily wanted a machine that would offer the quality it needed, since a large part of its customer base is in the high street, particularly fashion retailing and financial services. But it also wanted compatibility with its large format screen presses, which tend to run to a similar bed size to the Columbia, which is the model the Group opted to buy.

Birkin’s confidence in Columbia was quickly fulfilled: “That machine went in extremely successfully in terms of delivery. Inca installed it and had it running very quickly indeed – we’re talking 48 hours altogether. And that machine has hardly stopped running since then. It’s running virtually seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”

The Columbia Turbo was out of the blocks just as speedily. Installed alongside its older brother in June, it was delivered at 4 pm one afternoon, and running late afternoon on the following day. Inca engineers remained on site for two weeks, testing and upgrading the software, with IS slotting in some full speed production. Since then it has been used in full production.

According to Roger Birkin, although flat-out speed was the initial attraction,
it is not the only advantage the Turbo offers over the standard Columbia.
“ It’s response. If a customer wants something in a hurry, we can turn it around three times quicker. Yes, we get three times as much output for the effort we put in. But we can also satisfy a customer demand three times as fast.”

There are other advantages that appeal to managers. Columbia, both standard and Turbo, comes equipped with software capable of analysing its performance and providing management information about productivity, costs and performance. IS plans to feed that into its management information system to help it better manage its pricing and operations – a level of management detail that is impossible with screen presses.

Customer appeal
For Image Data Group the addition of large format digital printing has been a commercial success, bringing an even balance of both new customers, as well as attracting extra work from its long-standing customer base. Image Data Group has many retail customers wanting to establish store profiles, launching new store concepts, and creating new test sections, and it can now supply all the large format printing to dress a store at an economical cost. Digital methods also allow it to service the small chains cost effectively.
If a customer has, for example, 50 stores, it would be expensive for them to screen print items, whereas the Columbia takes it in its stride.

Birkin is absolutely convinced by digital’s commercial attraction.
“ We’re winning a larger share of customers’ business. Better still we’re in a strong position to now manage entire campaigns for customers.”

Image Data Group has an ambition to take the initiative to its customers.
It hopes to sell the message that buyers don’t need to overprint or carry stocks of materials. POP and display graphics can be turned around swiftly and in small quantities.
When a campaign calls for a mixture of materials on different substrates for a range on applications, the Group is able to supply all of those items, delivered to each store as one consignment, and because buyers need print no more than they need, costs are driven down.

From a retail customer’s standpoint, the proposition stacks up too. As well as lower costs, short-run digital printing allows a store chain to produce promotional subsets; to flash up pricing, reacting competitively, with unique promotions for each store in the chain, or for just one part of the product range.

Keeping up
At Drupa Sericol found that loading and unloading – admittedly not in ideal workflow conditions – in some cases took longer than the printing. Birkin supports the manufacturers’ moves to speed up this part of the operation:
“ With the speed of Turbo, you are beginning to need to automate to some degree the feed or substrate delivery. This is an area we want to push forward with Sericol and Inca. Once we’ve carried out the beta test work, we’ll look at some original proposals for material handling.”

Image Data Group has a vested interest in helping future developments. It hopes to move to operate two Columbia Turbos when the model goes into production. The Group has a resolutely belt-and-braces philosophy about reliability. It is proud of the loyalty of its customers, with most of whom the Group has a long-standing relationship, some since the business was founded in 1983. According to Birkin, “Very, very rarely have we let anyone down. If anything has gone wrong, something happening out of the blue, we have always come up trumps and made sure customers get what they order. We’re very service-oriented and dependable. To make sure this happens, our approach is to replicate our production facilities, and to have disaster recovery programmes in place, just in case.”

This philosophy had a bearing on the Group’s view of the Columbia in the first place. “One of the things we went to town about, looking at Columbia, was the warranty and the back-up cover. We only had one, and that was a major issue for us.”
For Image Data Group the plan to run two or more Columbias is logical to achieve its aim of complete dependability using multiple production sites and duplicating systems in different locations.

For Sericol, success is not solely reflected in the sale of more than 120 Eagle and Columbia printers around the world. The company recently won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2004. This prestigious award confirms how well the company’s inks are designed for their application and equipment. It is Sericol’s fifth Queen’s Award since 1981, but first in this category.

Experience of the Columbia Turbo beta tests have enabled IS to enter production with another brand new machine during September. Sericol’s business development manager, Malcolm Barden, says that the first models are being snapped up quickly.
“ We saw a great deal of interest in the Turbo at the Drupa exhibition and since, and we are now taking a number of confirmed orders.”

For more information:
On Image Data Group contact 01482 652323
On the Columbia Turbo contact Malcolm Barden at Sericol on 01843 866668.