A1 Jumbo Xerox aims at productivity jump with HP Pagewide XL4000

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A1 Jumbo Xerox

Kandivali-based digital print solutions provider A1 Jumbo Xerox has overhauled its technological set-up with installations of two new printers. During the month of April, it commissioned the newly launched Canon imagePRESS C650 and the HP Pagewide XL4000 production printer. Both these printers were supplied by Mumbai-based Edifice Technologies.

Being located next to the Kandivali station, the days are busy for A1 and time is of great essence ever since it has installed the printers. A1 deals primarily with retail clients and is now making inroads in the corporate space as well. “We are now focusing heavily on acquiring more customers from the corporate sector and their order flow is more consistent. Also, there is surety of timely payments. In recent years, our corporate customer base has grown steadily and is about 20% of the overall base,” says Biren Karia, proprietor of A1 Jumbo Xerox.

Karia believes the installation of HP Pagewide XL4000 will help in a long way in acquiring and servicing corporate clients given the fact that XL4000 is one of the fastest plotters in the market. “These days, time is the most important factor in any service and print is no different. If you cannot deliver the print jobs in time, you will soon be out of business. This is where HP Pagewide XL4000 comes into play as it gets you ahead of the competition. Now I can commit to a job with the confidence that I will deliver it in time. For instance, I can tell an architect about the number of plots I can produce in a day and then I can ask him for the order volume. I can assure him that I can produce far more number of copies than what others in the market can. So, when I can commit to such a speed, the customer will be ready to even pay a premium as it will save him a lot of time, which is very important,” Karia claims.

The HP PageWide XL 4000 printer includes a stationary 40-inch (101.6 cm) printbar that spans the whole printing width. As paper moves under the printbar, the entire page is printed in one pass, enabling very high printing speeds. The printer consolidates monochrome and color printing, as well as print, scan and copy in a single device. It can print up to eight D/A1 pages per minute in both monochrome and color and has a resolution of 1200 x 1200 dpi.

In addition to the HP Pagewide XL4000, A1 has invested in the newly launched Canon imagePRESS C650 production pointer. Before the Canon installation, A1 was working with a Konica Minolta bizhub PRO C6501.

“We were working with third-party printers who had Canon printers at their disposal and the results we got were very impressive, especially when it came to color consistency. That was an important reason why we opted for a Canon. We are among the very first printers to have installed the new imagePRESS C650 in Mumbai,” Karia shares.

The imagePRESS C650 was launched in India earlier this year at PrintPack India. The printer is built on the same platform engine as the imagePRESS C850 series. It is a 65 page per minute model that incorporates more professional finishing options, including a two-knife booklet trimmer, a paper folding unit, a document insertion unit, a booklet finisher, a multi-hole punch including creasing and a staple finisher. The device also enables duplex banner printing. It supports a range of production RIPs including PrismaSync and the EFI Fiery imagePress Server H300.

2023 promises an interesting ride for print in India

Indian Printer and Publisher founded in 1979 is the oldest B2B trade publication in the multi-platform and multi-channel IPPGroup. While the print and packaging industries have been resilient in the past 33 months since the pandemic lockdown of 25 March 2020, the commercial printing and newspaper industries have yet to recover their pre-Covid trajectory.

The fragmented commercial printing industry faces substantial challenges as does the newspaper industry. While digital short-run printing and the signage industry seem to be recovering a bit faster, ultimately their growth will also be moderated by the progress of the overall economy. On the other hand book printing exports are doing well but they too face several supply-chain and logistics challenges.

The price of publication papers including newsprint has been high in the past year while availability is diminished by several mills shutting down their publication paper and newsprint machines in the past four years. Indian paper mills are also exporting many types of paper and have raised prices for Indian printers. To some extent, this has helped in the recovery of the digital printing industry with its on-demand short-run and low-wastage paradigm.

Ultimately digital print and other digital channels will help print grow in a country where we are still far behind in our paper and print consumption and where digital is a leapfrog technology that will only increase the demand for print in the foreseeable future. For instance, there is no alternative to a rise in textbook consumption but this segment will only reach normality in the next financial year beginning on 1 April 2023.

Thus while the new normal is a moving target and many commercial printers look to diversification, we believe that our target audiences may shift and change. Like them, we will also have to adapt with agility to keep up with their business and technical information needs.

Our 2023 media kit is ready, and it is the right time to take stock and reconnect with your potential markets and customers. Print is the glue for the growth of liberal education, new industry, and an emerging economy. We seek your participation in what promises to be an interesting ride.

– Naresh Khanna

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