Poster Expo is an established provider of display solutions, located in Villeneuve-la-Garenne in the northern Paris suburbs. The 14-year-old company has developed a strong specialism in exhibition stand build and decoration, supplemented by high-quality display graphics work for creative agencies and copy shops outsourcing wide-format print for customers. An online ordering system also brings in smaller jobs direct from end users, such as posters and textile flags.
The Poster Expo product portfolio encompasses flags and banners, posters, canvasses, roll-ups, stretch textile graphics, promotional floor coverings and branded furniture for exhibitions and events. This diverse mix of applications, media types and customers, makes for a complex workload requiring careful job planning and high productivity. When investing in new technology, high volume output efficiency is the primary driver.
With this focus in mind, when Poster Expo’s owner Jacky Abitbol witnessed the impressive printing speed of the Océ Colorado 1640 at the printer’s launch at the FESPA exhibition in Hamburg in May 2017, he was immediately convinced that it represented an ideal solution for his business.
With the printer still front of mind and his interest in the capabilities of the new Canon UVgel technology already piqued by the FESPA demo, he followed up with a visit to a local Canon event. Seeing the Océ Colorado 1640 once again sealed his decision to buy the new 64” roll-to-roll printer.
“The product specifications of the Océ Colorado 1640 responded exactly to my requirement for a high production machine”, he explains. “Fundamentally, I was in need of speed and quality, so I decided to purchase the printer from Canon reseller Abysse.”
Installation followed in early September 2017, with the Océ Colorado 1640 boosting an existing line-up of 20 competitor solvent printers and a latex device. The new printer quickly lived up to Jacky Abitbol’s expectations where speed and quality were concerned, delivering prints at 40 square metres per hour in its highest quality mode. “I love the machine”, is his succinct summary.
Within two months of installation, Abitbol had already successfully used the Océ Colorado 1640 to work with 80 per cent of the media types printed at Poster Expo, including canvas, paper, PVC and polyester, with ambitions to extend to production across the whole spectrum of applications and substrates.
Poster Expo already operates at high levels of workflow automation, using a Caldera RIP and Enfocus Switch to streamline the web-to-print process. With a growing focus on a core portfolio of fewer, higher volume exhibition graphics applications, Abitbol’s ultimate ambition is to move towards unattended printing for optimal operational efficiency.
“At its core, Poster Expo is a niche business”, he emphasises. “The jobs we are printing today form the majority of our work and are of great importance to our success as a company. The combination of speed and quality delivered by the Océ Colorado is an excellent solution for us.”
