ElegantFoil & Print, a family-owned hot foil stamping and general print finishing business, is the first company in South Africa to acquire a Xerox Colour J75 press from DigiPress together with support from Bytes Document Solutions, the authorised Xerox distributor in 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The company specialises in hot foil stamping, which is the application of pigment or metallic foil to paper and board substrates. This process is used for products like business cards, corporate stationery, brochures, invitations, cartons and diaries. The owners of the business spotted a gap in the market for digital print-on-demand 10 years ago, which is when they purchased their first Xerox press. The company also provides print broking services for many commercial printers.
"When the time came to upgrade, we decided on the Xerox J75 without even considering other options," says Craig Carnell, MD of ElegantFoil & Print. "We wanted to offer our customers fast turnaround and high quality, at a competitive price. The J75 delivers on all those requirements, giving us many more sheets per minute. Our capacity and productivity have been vastly enhanced. In addition, the press offers duplex printing, copying and scanning, and is able to run all stocks at rated speeds. Importantly, it also features an anti-curl facility, which is really important in our environment, as heat often makes certain types of paper curl, which means the job is then very difficult to work with, should it require specific finishing techniques.
The press comes with a range of finishing options, such as face-trimming, saddle-stitching, punching, square-folding, trimming, stacking, multi-position stapling and tri-folding. It offers a choice of two powerful colour servers, giving users a variety of colour tools, workflow capabilities, processing speed and colour management controls. It also comes with a straightforward progressive operator screen that makes it easy to use in a busy print shop environment.
"In addition to speeding up our turnaround times, the quality produced by the press is outstanding," adds Carnell. "Our products look like they have been printed on a litho press. The device offers exceptional control over alignment and registration, assuring that our customers' jobs meet the most exacting standards. The colour is excellent, and we can produce high-value documents that have a smooth, offset-like matte finish, shadow detail and superior half-tones."
Paul Haglich, marketing manager for production systems at Bytes Document Solutions, says the Xerox Colour J75 press was the perfect choice for ElegantFoil & Print, which prints a large number of products for the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries in particular. "The J75 makes it easy to deliver quality for demanding customers," he says. "It automates great colour, runs heavyweight stocks at full-rated speed, produces a wide range of high-value applications, and integrates with the business to complement its existing workflow."
Commenting on the long-term relationship that ElegantFoil & Print has had with Bytes Document Solutions, Carnell says the after-sales service and support his company receives is first-rate. "BDS has always worked with us to improve our work processes so that we can deliver quality all the time."
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