By Brendan Perring, IPIA
Across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom there are print businesses that have the technical know-how, creative resources, and flare to generate new revenue streams and tap into growth markets – but they don’t always realise it or bring these elements together. Print finishing technology developer Duplo International has made it a mission to help them realise their potential and exploit it effectively.
The heartlands of commercial print have been under intense pressure for decades when it comes to being able to reap a respectable profit from them – in that there is nothing new. But what has changed fundamentally is that technology developers of all hues have been working flat out to provide print businesses with cost-effective platforms that help them transition into growth markets. Specifically those where they can retain better profits, and return to getting a premium from the print that they produce.
Chief among these are sectors such as point-of-sale, labelling and tags, personalised and embellished direct mail and marketing campaigns, short to medium-run packaging and even large-format print. And as Marine Kerivel-Brown, Head of International Marketing at Duplo explains, it is all about empowering customers to do more: “Printers need to challenge us, challenge themselves and we will try it and see how far we can go. What else can we do to create a beautiful print experience? There is so much to look forward to for our industry – if you can think it, you can create it. I am excited and there is a lot of magic to come.”
Marine continues, emphasising that the mission of her team is helping print businesses to analyse their strengths, identify opportunity and then capitalise on it: “Any form of activity that can create new revenue streams is what we are focussed on helping our customers embrace, whether that is exotically designed pocket folders or luxury packaging and labels.”
Beyond the perforated sheet
With this mission in mind, Duplo has developed a suite of both hardware and software technology, wrapped in a comprehensive business support package, that has been specifically aimed at enabling print businesses to diversify and expand their offering – while delivering new levels of creativity and value to their customers.
Andy Cuff, Product Specialist at Duplo explains further: “We are doing more than going in and filling a specific bottle neck with a new box. Instead, we are looking at the whole web of operators, workflow and machinery to see how we can advise the improvement of that whole eco-system. In doing so we can ensure our customers are more adaptable and flexible – which ultimately means they are more able to move into new markets.”
Andy’s reference to ‘new markets’ encapsulates being able to offer everything from pop-up greetings cards and promo mail, to kiss-cut hanging tags, paper bags and even luxury packaging. One of the solutions from Duplo to enable this is the PFi Blade cutting table, which has both B2 and B3 variants.
With no physical dies required and an automated feeding system, it allows you to cut, kiss cut, crease and perforate a range of substrates including paper, laminates, boards, adhesives and synthetic stocks dynamically, on demand.
Setting the system up is also very user-friendly, with PFi Blade Connect Software and its CCD camera automatic registration system ensuring that wastage can be kept to zero. With compact cutting heads, its B2 variant can cater for sheet sizes between 800 x 600mm down to 210 x 279mm. It also has a feeder capacity of 100mm, a cutting thickness of 6mm and a speed as fast as 12 seconds per sheet. The B3 meanwhile offers 600 x 400mm cut area, the same feeder capacity, a capability of handling 1.3mm sheets and a productivity level of up to 30 seconds per sheet.
Marine concludes: “For printers there is then a real opportunity to reach out to agencies, brands and specialist print buyers to give them creative and impactful ways to help them achieve cut through for their campaigns or products. It is also about printers asking themselves: What are the requests I am always turning down? What are the jobs I am continuously outsourcing? What jobs do I see my competitor able to cater for and I can’t?
“It is then considering their existing strengths and customer base and marketing themselves to them, highlighting the full breadth and depth of their product offering.”
The message from Duplo really is, “if you can think it, you can create it”, and as a solutions provider their goal is to help printers identify new revenue streams and growth markets, support them with both technology and best practice, and then help them continuously evolve their creative offering.
The Duplo PFi Blade B2+ opens up a new range of applications that can generate a real premium on print
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To find out more about how Duplo can support your growth ambitions: duplointernational.com/uk
