Iprint was founded by directors Julian Humphrey, who has 18 years' experience in print, and Krit Patel, who prior to iprint ran a print consultancy. The duo first met four years ago, when Patel was a customer of Humphrey's.

"We thought there was a way to do things better and so far we've been proven right," said Humphrey.

As part of the 1.5m spend the Leicester firm has bought a six-colour with coater B1 Heidelberg Speedmaster, supplied by White Horse Machinery. It has also installed a new B1 Agfa Galileo platesetter with Sublima XM screening, ApogeeX workflow, and a Grand Sherpa 50 ink-jet proofer.

The 14 staff firm also offers perfect binding, stitching and folding through a raft of used kit supplied by Nyland Graphics.

"I think we've bought rather well," said Humphrey. Iprint began trading in  April. It is made up of litho arm iprint and iprint Digital and separately housed large-format and exhibition specialist printvision owned by Patel and his brother Ash.

The digital division, which is headed up by directors Ash Patel and Humphrey, along with ex-Cavalier directors Mike Barton and Mark Clynchis, is housed in the iprint's 800m2 factory. Its firepower is based on a "previously enjoyed" Xeikon 500D digital press refurbished by Xeikon and a new Mimaki wide-format digital printer for outdoor display work and point of sale.

The directors hope to turn over 1.7m in the litho division, 700,000 in digital and 1m in large-format display. According to Humphrey "everything's looking good for that".

Story by Darryl Danielli