Presstek (S3-E290) has sold the reconditioned 34DI waterless four-colour press featured on the DPM stand (N5-B410) to the Royal Marsden Hospital’s Sutton inplant print facilities, a print centre for a number of other healthcare centres in the region.

The £100,000 SRA3 press has been bought by the inplant as part of an overall expansion of its facilities, which has also seen the centre invest in a new guillotine and booklet making kit.

The press will be used to produce a wide range of print, including books, patient forms and research documents for its affiliated cancer research centre. 

“What they were finding was that the level of quality expected in healthcare is increasing,” reported Julian Smith, UK business development manager at Presstek. “That’s inline with people being used as consumers to a higher quality of print generally. What we’re also seeing is that those inplants left in hospitals are becoming more professional, inline with the NHS starting to be managed overall in a more businesslike way.

“And it’s important for the hospital that the research papers they’re printing for the cancer centre are high quality and professional-looking,” he added. 

Expansion of the Royal Marsden Hospital’s inplant facilities is also geared towards attracting more private healthcare customers.

“Quality is key for those customers because they see themselves very much as blue-chip clients,” said Smith.

He added: “At the moment they have to put a lot of four-colour work out as they can’t get the quality and turnaround. Now they’re planning to bring back in-house a lot of that work they were outsourcing.”

Secondhand print machine reseller DPM is the only company working with Presstek to refurbish its machines. As part of an overall increased emphasis on refurbished presses, Presstek is aiming that DPM soon be in charge of 100% of UK refurbishments.

“We’ve now got five or six presses we’ve reconditioned out in the field and the relationship is working brilliantly,” said sales director at DPM Dean Beckett. “We’ve been talking about this for a while and putting this kind of thing into practice can be a challenge, but it’s actually worked very well.”