Based in Penryn, near Falmouth, the 10-staff family business commissioned a new Konica Minolta AccurioPress C3080 just prior to lockdown. It was installed by Konica Minolta reseller Service Offset Supplies (SOS).

The 81 A4ppm, 1,200dpi press joined a range of digital kit at the commercial printer, including a four-year old Ricoh Pro C7100 and Roland DG wide-format printer, as well as a five-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75.

Managing director Steve Booth, whose father founded the business 50 years ago, said he made the investment as pre-lockdown digital work was increasing and the firm was looking to better match the XL’s quality.

“Producing runs of 250 and below on our litho press was expensive and time consuming,” he said. “We needed to do it digitally, but it was crucial we were able to match litho quality.”

Booth’s AccurioPress is configured with Konica’s Integrated Color Care Unit, IQ-501, which features colour validation and automatic on-the-fly colour adjustment and front-to-back registration. SOS also installed FFEI’s RealPro workflow, which is linked to Booth’s screen platesetter and wide-format printers.

“Realpro is great, it joins the dots,” said Booth. “Before, our pre-press team had their specialist areas, but now they can all run any machine.”

He was equally effusive about supplier SOS.

“I’ve known Duncan Macdonald [Digital Sales Specialist at SOS] for 30-years and he has always looked after us,” said Booth.

Since late March, Booth said the business had been running at around 25% capacity, with its lockdown work mix predominantly focused on digital and signage. Half of its 10-staff are currently on furlough.

“Business is slowly picking up, people have started to go back to work and when they do they realise that we’re open, so it’s trickling back.”

The business was founded as a book binder by Booth's father in 1970, with print introduced by Steve Booth after he joined “because I got fed up with printers messing us around”, he quipped.