Navi Mumbai based Jasmine Art Printers is a leading printers in the region with two plants housing state-of-the-art technology across the board—from prepress to press to postpress. The print house boasts of six offset presses: three from Heidelberg, two from Komori and one from KBA. It has a Kodak CtP and a fully equipped postpress section. Jasmine Art prints everything from small tags, leaflets, business cards and brochures to books and huge carry bags. It has a monthly paper converting capacity of almost 50 tons. Jasmine also has a division devoted for printing mono cartons, specifically for the pharmaceutical industry. Although traditional offset printing still accounts for about 90% of the business, Jasmine has a sharp focus on the fast-growing digital part of its business.
On 30 June 2017, Jasmine installed two digital production printers from Ricoh—a 5-color PRO C7100X and a black-and-white PRO 8100se.
“We have been using digital printing technology for the last six years, mainly for print on demand jobs for books and also for variable data printing. Since we opted for a Ricoh color printer, we decided to also have a Ricoh black-and-white digital press. Our philosophy is to offer a great final product and having all kinds of technology inhouse is very important if we have to successfully achieve that goal,” says Pramod Parulkar, director, Jasmine Art Printers.
Jasmine has opted for PRO C7100X, which has a fifth color option of white, clear and neon yellow. Jasmine is the first printer in Mumbai to install the PRO C7100X with neon yellow toner. Ricoh launched the neon yellow toner late last year, which allows print service providers to produce highly creative and value-added prints. The neon yellow toner is retrofittable, at extra cost, making it possible for current Ricoh Pro C7100X customers to expand their capabilities.
Demand creation
For Jasmine, a very important idea behind opting for the PRO C7100X was to utilize the fifth color option to print premium and high value jobs for its customers.
“We will now work on creating the demand for jobs where we can use the new Ricoh technology. This strategy will be for both our existing customers as well as for potential customers. We expect this new option to make short or personalized print runs more effective for our customers,” Parulkar shares. He also plans to use the fifth color to print on a variety of substrates such as metpet.
Parulkar informs that Jasmine’s mono carton division will also be utilizing the services of the new Ricoh C7100X.
“We do UV printing jobs on substrates such as metpet. Earlier we were doing the proofing jobs on our offset press, which was a time consuming process. Since the Ricoh C7100X has the white color option, we can do all our proofing on this printer. This will save us a lot of time and money,” he adds.
GST a positive development
Since we met with Parulkar in the early part of July, when the transition to GST was at full swing, we also asked the impact the new system will have on the print industry. Like many of his colleagues in the industry, Parulkar too believes GST will lead to reduction in irregularities. He says the confusion that is being felt initially is expected to clear in a couple of months as printers will have no other option but to adopt the new system.
