Ahmedabad’s digital print specialist, Sonal Xerox has installed a second Ricoh Pro C651EX press at its new centre in the city. The second C651EX will sit at the firm’s new centre at Pralhad, also known as Corporate Road.
Sonal Xerox specialises in document solutions and produces co-laterals and flyers for corporate clients like Xydus, Cadilla, Intas Pharma, besides VDP-based invitation cards and colour prints for walk-in customers. Sonal’s other four centres are situated in CG Road, Jamalpur, Ashram Road and Satellite areas of Ahmedabad. These four centres houses a varied range of presses – Ricoh’s C651EX, Konica Minolta’s C6501, Xerox 5000 and 770, Canon’s C7010VP and wide-format presses from HP, Roland, Ricoh and Oce.
At present, the firm prints around 1.5-lakh A3 prints per month, 30,000 of which are produced on the first Ricoh C651EX. “We are impressed with the many features that the C651EX has to offer,” said Rakesh Surani, managing partner of the firm, while giving reason for opting for the second press.
“I am particularly impress with the print size of 13x25-inch, which the press is capable of printing. This allows us to produce three-fold brochures, books with bleeds, and the like, with ease. While the six-trays helps operational ease, the bypass tray allows us to print a stop-gap print on a different type of substrate, without have to open the tray to feed the paper. Besides, the press also supports magnetic media, which is a bonus for the type of work we do,” said Surani.
Avinash Sonawane, business development manager for production printing business group at Ricoh India, further elaborated on the features of the press. “The USP of the C651EX installed at Sonal is the capability of the press to print in 4,800dpi, and the features like liquid coolant technology, which helps control temperate resulting in consistent print quality and the AC transfer assembly, which allows deep penetration of toner on textured substrate.
According to Surani, Ahmedabad’s digital print market produces a volume of 25-lakh prints per month, 20-lakh of which is for the textile sector, while the rests is done for local and corporate. “We used to do a little for the textile sector, but have stopped doing it because of margins and there’s a bit of slackness in the textile market, too.”
Surani manages the five centre along with his brother and managing partner, Mukesh. The centres put together produces 1.5 lakh A3 prints per month.
As per market information, Ahmedabad has around nine Ricoh presses, including six C900s; 15 Konica Minolta presses, including 10 C8000; Xerox has around 25 presses, most of them DC 5000, two 770 and two Color 1000; and Canon has two C7000 series presses, installed.
“We are late entrants in the market, yet we have made good progress in this very good market for digital print,” said Sonawane. He hopes to close the financial year, March 2014 with four more installations
