HP today announced that GSI Printing, of Kontich, Belgium, has installed a triple line-up of HP Scitex Printers in order to strengthen its service capability and meet the increasing and changing needs of customers.
The new equipment comprises the high-volume HP Scitex FB7500 and FB6700 Printers, as well as the HP Scitex LX800 Printer, which runs water-based HP Latex Inks.
Founded several years ago out of the merger between Graphic Screen International and MAT, GSI Printing has enjoyed progressive growth and is today a multidisciplinary out- and in-store communication partner to well-known national and international brand-names, advertisers and creative agencies. Thanks to its recent HP investment, GSI Printing is now the largest digital printing company serving the Belgian marketplace.
Commenting on the importance of its latest HP installations, Christian Duyckaerts, general manager of GSI Printing Belgium, said, "HP is a leader in large format digital printing technology and these new printers greatly enhance our productivity while enabling us to expand the range of our applications offering. With its up to 500m2/hour print capacity, the FB7500 provides high-speed printing at the right cost, and it will be pivotal to our ability to print medium and long runs of POP/POS applications at ever-tighter deadlines."
At the same time, Duyckaerts believes the industrial inkjet attributes and water-based, pigmented HP Scitex WB300 Supreme Inks of the flatbed FB6700 make for a robust print solution that ticks the right boxes when it comes to satisfying GSI's environmental objectives. "The fully automated aspect of the heavy-duty FB6700 will deliver added impetus to our rigid-media print capability", he said. "This together with fast-drying water-based inks that are UV-,(1) abrasion- and water-resistant, will ensure our display and packaging applications benefit from offset-like vibrancy, while also facilitating an improved printing environment."
For Duyckaerts, GSI Printing's continued adoption of new technologies not only align perfectly with the company's environmental objectives, but are also an increasingly stipulated requirement from customers - key factors that lead to the HP LX800 installation.
"As well as being asked to utilise more environmentally-friendly technologies, we also strive hard to encourage customers to select more sustainable options", continued Duyckaerts. "The HP LX800, together with the multiple-substrate printing advantage of its latex inks can help meet these goals and enables us to undertake a greater diversity of larger-sized applications that also deliver stunning visual quality."
Having installed the trio of HP equipment in the last few months, GSI Printing was quick to integrate the new firepower into its printing operations. Indeed, according to Duyckaerts, the HP Scitex FB7500 in particular, made an immediate impact on a project undertaken on behalf of major sports retailer, Decathlon. During the summer, the company capitalised on the FB7500's ability to print to an extensive range of sheet-fed material, which saw it produce a range of eye-catching in-store POS graphics.
"We only had a very tight timeframe in which to print the Decathlon graphics, and despite the fact that we were printing variable-data to a range of materials - such as foam- and corrugated-board - maintaining consistent colour accuracy was critical", he explained. "We were delighted that the HP Scitex FB7500 Printer lived up to our expectations and, as is the case with our other new HP equipment, it has since proved its worth on a number of other high profile customer projects."
GSI Printing employs nearly 40 people throughout its operations and shares a 15,000m² facility in Kontich with its partner, Print and Display - a leading provider of large format offset poster printing and POS displays.
(1) In central-Europe. According to standard ASTM-D2565-99.
