Digital print and signage company Inkfish has improved its digital print and production capabilities with a new Xerox Versant 80 from Cape Office Machines and Bytes Document Solutions (BDS).
BDS is the authorised Xerox distributor in 26 sub-Saharan countries and a part of the Telecommunications, Multi-Media and Information Technology (TMT) organisation of Altron, the parent holding company.
The purchase of the new production-grade printer coincided with the company’s relocation to new premises in the heart of the government and education district of the Cape Town CBD.
Inkfish creative director Willem Jacobs says the main drivers for the upgrade were quality and reliability.
“The digital printer we initially used to start the business was not ideal,” says Jacobs. “We had reliability issues, and the quality was not always up to standard, so when the opportunity to go upmarket with Xerox presented itself, we grabbed it with both hands.”
Jacobs explains that Inkfish is an offshoot from parent company Sorted Design and Advertising, a Pretoria-based digital design agency that opened a Cape Town satellite in 2010.
“When we started operating in Cape Town we realised there was a great need for independent printing services for our agency clients,” says Jacobs. “We were being asked more and more to produce larger volumes of artwork and other consumables like stationery, and while we had basic resources, we weren’t engineered like a full-blown printing company.”
According to Jacobs, Inkfish was created as a separate company which started off small but grew quickly as its reputation for quality work and always-on-time delivery took hold.
“It was a case of growing the business organically. Toward the end of 2016, we moved premises so we could physically split the two businesses, each needing its own creative space,” says Jacobs.
In consultation with Cape Office Machines sales executive Dayne Ridgway, the Xerox Versant 80 was earmarked as an ideal upgrade for the company, not only in the short term but also as a scalable platform for future growth.
“The Xerox Versant 80 immediately fit in with our workflow and got us producing better products faster from day one,” says Jacobs. “From duplexing to paper stock to colour management, it ticks all the boxes, and because it is part of a much larger scalable solution, it has plenty of scope to grow with the business.”
“Cape Office were able to build a solution for us that covered every angle, from the technology to the training to the finances. This holistic approach demonstrated a commitment to our business,” concludes Jacobs.
The Versant 80 features Xerox’s industry-leading high-resolution engine capable of printing at 2400 x 2400 dpi imaging resolution with up to 1200 x 1200 x 10-bit rendering at 80PPM on almost any stock up to 350gsm.
The Xerox Versant 80 also supports:
* Full duplexing on all paper stocks,
* An inline spectrophotometer and Automated Color Quality Suite (ACQS) to produce stable and accurate colour on every job,
* Compact belt fuser technology that applies the uniform heat and pressure needed to bond Xerox’s Emulsion Aggregation (EA) dry ink to a wide range of surfaces without slowing production speed, while optimising image quality on solids, tints and halftones.
