Innovative German Digital Printing Bureau installs a Barco DigiPress-System with Xeikon DCP-32/F2 for the first online DigiPrint-Center of the world.
a:prico in Hamburg, a recently-formed company, is the first operation in the world to offer a fast digital printing from print- and administration-data received direct from the customers via ISDN, installed a digital colour press in December 94/January 95.
The company was founded by Manfred M. Liebold, who had previously spend many years running a famous pre-press bureau and owning a little printing office. "I only decided to set up my new company a:prico last year, because I believe, there is an exploited market niche for a chain of digital printing bureaux offering the facility to print a wide range of material, on a rapid turnaround basis, using compete data, including circulation, format and deadline instructions, received from clients via ISDN, which runs through a full automatic prepress-process without any operator interaction direct into the colourpress," explains Mr. Liebold at Demand Printing Conference and Exibition, New York, where he become the winner of the Printing-on-Demand Innovation Leadership Award.
"My plan is to offer this digital online service for 60 - 80 percent of all standard jobs in the following way: The customer produced his job on a Mac, PC or Unix-workstation with his prefered dtp- or office-program and finished it by writing a postscript-file. On a second PC (communication-box with ISDN-Board) runs a special administration software written by a:prico. This software is able to collect all informations needed first for calculate the job and second for steering the production at the online digiprint centre in a very simple way. If the customer wants to print the job, he only has to say ok. and everything runs by itself. No messenger is necessary to carry the data, no call to ask for the price and at least: If the printed products will be delivered, our invoice will be printed at the small desktop printer in the customers office and the amount shall be charged to the clients account."
Today a:prico also offers a highly-efficient digital printing service with data currently being received from clients in a variety of optical disk, syquest formats etc. "However, I believe, that our business will really take off later in the year, because I know of no other digital printing bureau currently in existence able to take all the required data for printing project online, and to then produce high-quality, four-colour print maybe with variable data, with an extremely rapid turnaround, on a short-run digital colour press. I consider the potential market for such a service is enormous and, if my project is a success, I plan to open at least another 15 similar digital printing bureaux throughout Germany within the next years and, together with interested partners, even throughout in Europe."
"Xeikon's innovative DCP-1 digital one-pass-duplex press will be an absolutely vital element in our success, but in future our software will also be able to calculate bigger formats printed on a digital poster-press or higher runlenght printed on a traditional offset press via image setter etc. Clearly, the ability of the DCP-1 to print from digital input was the critical factor which led me to order the Xeikon machine together with the Barco equipment. However, its speed of operation and the press' ability to print duplex in a wide range of formats, from standard A4 an A3 brochures in the right order, letters and flyers personalised right up to sizeable posters, was also just as important."
The Barco prepress system comprising a Digital AXP server, OPI interface, several workstations and a Barco FastRIP plus 32 Gigabyte PrintStreamer is currently linked to the Xeikon DCP-1 via a very fast network. This equipment basically allows us to automate the full workflow in the printing center, from arriving the data via ISDN over automatic prepress functions (electronic collating, automatic trapping etc.) till print out one proof or store the data in the printqueue '130 g paper' for example.
Sins the launch of the online service, a:prico supply more and more backcomming clients with the necessary software to be able to download all the data required for printing projects direct to there system.
"With very little effort either by us or our customers, whether they are a small business, advertising agency or a large multinational, we are able to turn around even very involved printing jobs extremely rapidly. The fact that there is no requirement for any of the traditional printing intermediate stages, such as scanning , imagesetting and platemaking, means will be able to offer a lightning turnaround. In addition, the costs incurred by our clients will be far less than if they had used the more conventional offset printing route, particularly for short-run jobs between one and a few thousand copies.
I believe that with this innovative system I have identified a real gap in the market, and I am confident that with the high quality of our facilities, and in particular Xeikon’s innovative DCP-1/F, my company’s business will expand rapidly as our reputation spreads."
