The FUJIFILM Acuity Prime 30 has provided Centrum Group CEO Craig Elvin more flexibility.
Sydney-based Centrum Group recently invested in a new FUJIFILM Acuity Prime 30 to broaden its print work for both new and existing clients.
Centrum Group CEO Craig Elvin told ProPrint the investment into digital equipment provides the business with the ability to complement its strength in offset printing.
“The Acuity Prime 30 is an important addition to our business – particularly in the point of sale category,” Elvin says.
“Not long after I joined the business, I saw a need for a new piece of digital equipment to help us deliver a larger volume of branded point of sale and marketing material for specific clients.
“What we are seeing more and more often is a single campaign from an FMCG client that is being rolled out simultaneously across a number of different retailers such as Big W, Kmart, Woolworths, Target, Aldi and IGA – and the majority of these clients want personalised brand-specific point of sale executions.
“In an offset environment if you are creating 250 floor stands, you have to run out 50 to 100 sheets per colour to get the set up right – and all of that is going straight into the recycling bin, so it is just not economical.
“Our business is Centrum Group – not Centrum Offset Printing – we sell print and should not limit ourselves to just offset. We have two of the biggest offset printers in the southern hemisphere – the KBA162 and the KBA145 but when these machines cannot fulfill our customers’ needs, we need to be able to have options, the Acuity Prime 30 allows us to do that.
“We are known for creating big bold colourful packaging and point of sale for many clients, but we are also asked to produce a lot of other different work for customers. One of the reasons we have installed the Acuity Prime 30 is because we want to be able to control the production process in-house, not relying on external companies. It has also been great to help turn around work for clients in a couple of days that we have not been able to deliver previously.
“Before we decided on the Acuity Prime 30, we had discussions with five of the major suppliers and from these discussions we struck up a great relationship with Glenn Conyers and the team at FUJIFILM.
“We started looking at a higher end model, but we decided to dip our toe in the water with a good machine like the Acuity Prime 30 that can help us hit the sweet spot and this also involved understanding the difference between LED UV and offset ink consumption.
“It was also important that we bought the right machine that also worked for our estimators and floor staff and worked in conjunction with our die cutting and finishing equipment to prevent bottlenecks.
“Before we made our final decision, we did some trials of the Acuity Prime 30 and I visited the FUJIFILM demo centre in Sydney. We ended up buying the demo model which worked for us and they were also keen to get the machine into the market. The big selling point for me was the spot gloss and customers are continuously surprised by the quality of the work. We have a foil laminator, so the ability to print on foil was also a huge advantage as well – why wouldn’t we focus on what we are good at. We now also have the ability to create short runs or custom work for clients, and we have done some foil prototypes for clients.
“The best thing about the Acuity Prime 30 is how easy it is to run. Once the art is downloaded, the pre-press operator will set the job up and then we can grab anyone off the floor to run the machine. All they need to do is – press that button and then that button, then that button – take the sheet off and then put another one on and then do the same thing again. The interface is fairly simple to understand. To operate the machine, it definitely helps to have a graphics background, to understand things like passes and smoothing as well as things like laying down white first. So far we have printed on a wide variety of substrates including corrugated, foam board, corflute, Yupo, PET and floor vinyls.
“The service we have received from Glenn and the team at FUJIFILM has been great. We made the right decision by picking them and since then they have embedded themselves within our business. In terms of a supplier, we couldn’t have asked for a better partnership. How many CEOs know the name of the service tech – that is how close our businesses have become.
“The FUJIFILM team are always available and have access to a range of service technicians to assist with the installation process and that has been very refreshing. There is nothing worse than dealing with a salesperson who tries to do all of the trouble-shooting themselves as a one-man-band – that is just not the case with FUJIFILM. If we had a problem, they immediately came back to us and the issue had been referred to someone within the organisation. Every time the problem was resolved either later that afternoon or someone would be onsite the following day.
Elvin said it is also very beneficial to have access to the Campbellfield ink laboratory in Melbourne.
“We have also had very open discussions with their teams about inks and substrates as well as things like drying times and tape tear tests. For example a few weeks ago, we were not sure of the dyne level of the corflute. We sent some files down to Campbellfield and they performed some testing on different substrates with different inks and sent them back so we could look at the colour variances from the different inks. It is clear that they want us to succeed with this machine and as a result we are getting more and more work and we are getting better and better at running the machine.”
This article appears in ProPrint April 2024.
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