Having enjoyed 40% year-on-year wide format printing growth running its Canon Colorado 1650 ‘workhorse’ an average of 10 hours a day, investing next in a high-performance Canon Colorado M5 printer was one of the easiest choices Paul Ilieski, Manager of Melbourne-based trade printer, Printrade, was ever going to need to make.
'The new Colorado M5 effectively doubles our wide format capacity', says Paul Ilieski, Manager of Melbourne-based trade printer, Printrade
Seeing his business as ‘a silent partner in premium trade printing’, Ilieski says: “The Colorado M5 effectively doubles our wide format capacity, as well as ensuring faster turnaround times and the capacity to manage even larger volumes without any compromise on quality.”
“With the additional advantages the UVGel technology gives us, as well as the creative options afforded by the M5’s FLXfinish+ feature, we’ve effectively been able to double down on the high quality and high productivity that we’re set up to achieve – every time.”
“The secret is in the way we’ve designed our workflow,” adds Ilieski. “We put a good 16 months into working out the optimum design and production workflow: what combinations of printer/cutter/finishing would work best for the types of jobs we get in. Our highly customised software system sits behind all this and ensures a fluid and cohesive flow from our front-end Canon Production Printers through to various cutting and finishing options.”
This equipment now includes two 64” roll-to-roll UVgel printers: the Colorado 1650 and recently commissioned Colorado M-Series - which itself offers two speed configurations and an easy-care white ink option to substantially raise the range of possible applications. Complementing these printers is a Canon Arizona XTF UV flatbed printer, designed for printing edge to edge (full-bleed) and double-sided on multi-board, multi-layer, large tiled images, heavy, smooth, pre-cut rigid media or flexible media.
Cutting and finishing is handled by Printrade’s two large format Summa S3-160TC cutters (from Pozitive Graphics), a Colex SharpCut Pro and Fotoba XLD 170HS XY cutter.
“We do our own packing inhouse too,” adds Ilieski, “from shaping/printing/cutting the PVC Boards, right through to producing our own mailboxes to send jobs out.”
Printrade’s customer base is typically high-end retail and the printer has set itself up well to deliver more niche applications, like peel and stick wallpaper or the production of a rage of die-cut / kiss-cut stickers and labels. “Our customers know that their brand representation simply will not change from ‘spot on’ for every sticker or sheet or product they receive back from us.”
