The investment includes a new Fuji Acuity Advance HS HD3545W UV printer, a new Esko Kongsberg XP24 digital cutter and a new larger wide format premises.
The Acuity is BCQ’s first foray into flatbed printing and will join existing Mimaki, Canon, HP and Kodak roll-fed inkjet machines in the company’s ‘Jolly Big’ division. Boosted efficiency and quality were the main reasons for the investment, with the machine capable of 40.2 sq m/hr at production quality, 28.4 sq m/hr at high quality and 61 sq m/hr in express mode.
"We are doing a lot of double handling at the moment where you’re having to mount rather than print directly onto the substrate, so there are lot of economies to be made there," said chairman Richard Knowles.
He added: "Also I think the result looks better. It’s been around long enough to have proven itself, it’s very good quality, and in terms of uptime it’s going to be exceptionally good."
Meanwhile, the 100 m/min Kongsberg XP24, which will join an existing line-up of wide format cutters, was chosen for its speed. "In addition to what we’re going to be doing with it on the wide format side, we’ll be using this for some of our folders or other complex prototyping operations before we put them on one of our die cutters. It’s going to assist with overflow for our main litho and digital business," said Knowles.
He added: "There was plenty of competition out there for it. We’ve been very impressed with the uptime and the fact that we can grow into it. It’s probably far faster than we need at the moment but I think we’ll grow into it."
The new kit is due to be installed in BCQ’s new dedicated Jolly Big premises which will be three times bigger than BCQ’s previous wide format works.
The aim is for Jolly Big to double in size. "Jolly Big is a relatively small part of the business at the moment; it’s probably about 10%. I’d like to think that would double," said Knowles.
He added: "We recognise that the strength of BCQ is that we have lots of different disciplines. It’s good to have lots for when one is quiet; that helps cushion any other areas that could fall on hard times. Certainly from Jolly Big’s point of view it’s been pretty much ten out of ten for the last couple of years in terms of the amount of work going through."
