Kemtek has announced that it has sold 24 units of Komori presses since being awarded the distribution in January this year.
Vivian Rudaizky, Chairman of Kemtek, says: "For a company that was predicted not to get out of the starting stalls with this distribution, I think we have done pretty well!"
The sales have established that the confidence that was placed in Kemtek by Komori was not unfounded.
"In fact, they are over the moon," says Gavin van Rensburg, Kemtek Director, Press and Pre-Press Equipment Sales. "I don`t think that anyone expected such good sales so soon after being awarded the responsibility. It`s also important to mention that none of the sales were to existing Komori users."
The printers who have purchased the Komori presses are:
* Ingwe Printers in Nelspruit - Lithrone 4-colour 28-inch (print tests are being conducted here presently).
* DNA Print, Durban - Lithrone 4-colour 28-inch, also purchased a complete front-end solution including Screen Trueflow workflow system and a PlateRite 8000 Platesetter.
* Lito Tipo in Luanda, Angola - Lithrone 4-colour 28-inch plus 5-colour 28-inch with coater plus links to prepress.
* Pinetown Printers in KZN - Lithrone 5-colour 40-inch plus coater and complete front-end links.
Kemtek has focused its efforts on building an infrastructure to support the Komori installations and in this regard has doubled its engineering support complement.
"We have recruited 13 highly trained people, ranging from engineers to a national service manager, to ensure our after-sales service is one of the very best in the country," says Van Rensburg. "There are spare parts personnel who will focus entirely on this area of support, a full-time print demonstrator and factory trained Komori print engineers in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.
"The whole exercise is to give customers and potential customers the confidence that they will have our ongoing and hands-on support every step of the way. Komori is giving full additional support with training in the UK and generous support with engineering sales and maintenance personnel sent by Komori, UK to South Africa."
He says one of the failings regarding Komori in the past was the unavailability of front-end applications linking pre-press to press, and this is an area of great expertise with Kemtek, so it is able to offer complete front-end and back-end solutions to clients.
"The printing process today is becoming more of a manufacturing exercise with the correct and expedient process of data. If a distributor is unable to offer this kind of solution when selling a press, they will find themselves falling behind in the marketplace."
Rudaizky says Komori has a proven and excellent track record the world over, and SA will very quickly take its place in this proud lineage.
"When you have a product this good and you have the infrastructure to back it correctly, every prediction has to be a powerfully affirmative one. Our philosophy is service, service and more service, and we have every intention of seeing this product, together with our other solutions, taking off in a way that even we never thought possible.
"You know, for a company that was predicted never to get up and running with this product, I think we have stunned many of the doomsayers. In our 45 years in the printing industry, our greatest advertisers have been some of our competitors."
Another feather in the caps of the Kemtek guys is that the last two Komori installations have been completed from start to finish by themselves. "One of the negatives heard in the industry following the awarding of the Komori agency was that we did not have the infrastructure to support the brand," says Van Rensburg. "Well, I think we have proved those pundits wrong and with the amazing interest that is being shown in Komori, I can only see us going from strength to strength."
But maybe the final word should come from one of the new purchasers, Jenny Pascoe, who together with husband Grant runs Ingwe Print. She says: "We decided to buy the Komori because it is known for its state-of-the-art technology and superior print quality and being the only one in the area, it will give Ingwe Print a definite advantage over our competitors."
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