Avantika Printers of Delhi has installed the Canon imagePRESS C8000V. Their faith in Canon continues for the quality and service they have been getting from Canon.
Canon and M N Pandey have written an ideal success story for Avantika Printers of Delhi. The story has various milestones like the Canon imagePRESS C7000VP, then a C7010VP, then another C7010VP, then a C800VP and finally a C8000VP – all got installed at Avantika to answer to the diverse printing demands of the Delhi & NCR region. The more recent C8000VP got installed in May 2017.
According to Canon, the imagePRESS C8000VP takes Digital colour printing to the next level, combining exceptional quality, productivity and versatility at 80 ppm across a vast variety of applications. The digital press is capable of printing across an extensive range of media up to 350 gsm.
“The C8000VP comes fully loaded with the EFI B4000 Fiery server, where we have opted for the Fiery Graphics Arts Package – Premium Edition. The package includes automatic preflight, GA filters for hot folders/virtual printers, and ImageViewer,” says Himanshu Pandey of Avantika Printers.
Though they have produced with and run various other machines like Xerox, Konica Minolta and Ricoh; Canon for Avantika means durability and service. M N Pandey says, “For us, Canon is the best equipment – they have the best Digital Printing machines available in the market. Since the investment in the latest technologies today is substantial, we believe the quality of equipment must be the best. Hence we never compromise on that. Canon is just in line with our this belief.”
A Canon for a Canon
Avantika was well on the threshold of upgrading their existing imagePRESS C7010VP when Pandey looked for various options available for a state-of-the-art Digital press. “Since the latest machine we had had already completed five years, it became necessary to induct another latest machine to lead our fleet,” shares Pandey. He believes that for machine like this, five years is the perfect time to upgrade or replace. Though their C7010VP hadn’t been run to its full capacity, yet, according to Pandey, its optimum working life had been passed. The changing market demands and quality upgrade was what pushed the decision at Avantika Printers to install a Canon imagePRESS C8000VP.
With the earlier technologies installed at Avantika, it was not possible to carry out certain special jobs like textured printing and long printing. “Though we started textured printing with our C800 but still doing heavy textured printing wasn’t possible,” reveals Pandey. Now, with C8000VP, they are not only printing deep textured images but also long print. It was also not possible for them to shift production for large volume jobs between different machines, because of quality variations. With their latest high capacity imagePRESS, they have been able to further narrow the quality variation between samples as well as print products. Moreover, now enabled by EFI, the Ripping time at Avantika has also been substantially reduced. This too has helped in more efficient operations at the company, which is today a one-stop shop for customers’ complete print related demands. It had relocated to Okhla about a year ago. With the production in full swing, the new facility brings all its operations under a single roof. All departments of Avantika now have separate floors.
What makes Avantika unique…
Obviously, Avantika is a preferred shop for its customers. It has reached a great height in quality printing, to a greater extent, by Pandey’s knack for sorting complex practical problems of print production. Many a times he is doing difficult jobs that are turned down by some other printers. He also educates fellow printers, should they ever come to him with their problems. As a bonus, the customers who get their stuck jobs through at Avantika, never leave Avantika. They are an expert at ‘mix & match’. The final products that Avantika produces have a tint of subtle expert touches that make their products unique. They have mastered their technique; and this is what makes them unique.
Around 35 percent of the business is contributed by publishing related printing at Avantika. They do job works that come to around 10-15 percent of the total volumes. Rest 50 percent are from commercial, Offset and other products that also include outsourced printing jobs.
Over the years, Pandey has put special emphasis on finishing & converting part of their products. “We are a failure if we have vast printing capabilities but don’t have a matching finishing capacity,” he states. Consequently, he has invested in various finishing, converting equipment, chiefly for books finishing. These include die-cutting, three-knife cutting, hard binding, foiling, laminating, UV coating, screen printing, Perfect Binding and PUR – both open and close type – machines. “I have taken care of managing our operations towards perfection. When you do this, you get the quality as you can also handle quantity and timely deliveries,” continues Pandey.
Customers of Avantika are usually from Delhi and NCR region. It also has customers from other parts of the country who usually get their printing demands pertaining to the region met by Avantika.
Himanshu, Pandey’s son has received certification from EFI on Fiery. He now uses his Fiery to optimum use. Having learned various combinations, values, inputs, adjustments and formula etc., he is now handling files for various quality related standards, colour specifications, machine control, calibration and many such things which ultimately have helped him in efficient cost management at Avantika. In his own words, “We are in a time bound trade. Once we are able to save time with same or better quality, we are ultimately cutting costs for our business. This is how the EFI Fiery certification has helped me. It would be unbelievable for a layman if I tell him that I have saved as much as 50% of time in many routine processes. In some cases it has been far more too!”
The next step in technology adoption for Avantika is streamlining processes towards automation. “We have been doing our estimation, costing, quoting, pricing etc. as per traditional methods. Now that things have settled down on machine and infrastructure set up, we are looking forward towards streamlining of processes through efficient Management Information System (MIS). We shall be going for the one which will particularly suit our demands,” concludes Mr. Pandey.
Avantika is also planning to launch its range of stationery products. It will be utilising the spare capacity during the lean period between May and July.
Speaking on the occasion of the installation of the first imagePRESS C8000VP in India, Puneet Datta, Director, Canon India observes, “The imagePRESS C10000VP has proven itself to grow the print volumes of our customers by up to three times upon upgrade to our Color Digital Press. This has been possible due to the new technologies that have been incorporated in the system that help deliver exceptional quality, high productivity and great colour consistency. However, there are PSPs who don’t necessarily need the 100ppm speed, but are looking for a press that will still provide the same high quality, reliability, consistency and media handling of the C10000VP; for those PSPs, the C8000VP is the answer.”