Five Star fires up Iridesse

From its Dominion Road site in Auckland, Five Star Print supplies a range of digitally printed products.
 
Rajesh Mudundi, managing director at Five Star Print, took over the company in 2012 and, since then, he has built it from a small neighbourhood copy shop into a busy digital print business, offering everything from business cards to booklets, and signage to packaging.
 
He says, “We have a diverse range of customers including businesses in hospitality and small to medium size businesses across the board.”
 
He has a focus on maintaining the company’s strong reputation for good service, taking work from design through to finishing. He says, “We have an in house design team and we encourage our customers to take advantage of our prepress capabilities.
 
“So, when a customer has a file that is not print ready, we don’t send them away to fix it. Instead, we say, ‘Don’t waste your time doing that. We will fix it fast and print your job’. As a printer, we know what needs to be done so our customers can focus on their own businesses.
 
Iridesse arrives
Recently, Five Star Print installed a Fuji Xerox Iridesse digital production press. He says, “We were using two Fuji Xerox Color 1000 digital presses and we took the opportunity to replace one of them with the Iridesse. Of course, we looked at other machines but nothing could match the Iridesse.
 
“It made good sense for us to keep one of the Color 1000 presses because they are such good machines but we have to say that the Iridesse has taken our image quality, colour quality and production to a much higher level.”
 
For higher image quality, Fuji Xerox developed Super EA Eco dry ink. It has higher viscoelasticity, a lower melt point, and a smaller particle size, which means greater smoothness and better quality of fine detail with improved graininess and dot reproducibility. Five Star has already benefited from these advancements. He says, “The first thing we have seen with the Iridesse is that we can produce colours that are so much more vibrant and punchy than the older machines.”
 
The Fuji Xerox White dry ink underprint enables printing on coloured paper and transparency film. With this superior white dry ink, Five Star Print can print black, coloured, metallic paper, and films. Fuji Xerox says that only the Iridesse can print white colour under, and CMYK on it. For printing on film, CMYK are placed on the backside instead of the surface and white is placed on them. Printing on embossed paper can be handled with overprint of clear dry ink.
 
He says, “With this ink, we can choose different colours. We can change the toners in and out, so we can create more colours and we have so many more options.
 
Personalise packaging
As a print company looking for innovative technology to move its business forward, Five Star Print has found its solution with the Fuji Xerox Iridesse.
 
Mudundi says, “The white ink has changed the business for us. We use it on labels and smaller packaging. For example, we have clients who need a run of two or three hundred boxes. We have outsourced this work previously and the cost is quite high; on offset, it is a nightmare. We now complete these jobs in house. We have a small cutter that can do these small runs; all in house and all digital. We don’t need to make a die.
 
“With the Iridesse, we have opened the market for small run package boxes and personalised boxes. The white ink option means we can print on a variety of substrates. It gives excellent results in terms of book covers as well. Plus, we have the larger sheet size.
 
“The Iridesse also has the high stacker. The booklet finisher can trim the tops and bottoms as well. Using standard paper, we use the booklet maker to produce books up to 60 pages, all with a nice square finish.
 
“We have a strong relationship with Fuji Xerox, which began in 2012 when we wanted to increase our productivity. The machine we had could not handle the workload. So we introduced a Fuji Xerox machine that doubled our production speed at that time and we increased our customers.
 
“That helped us to realise that we need to produce quality printed products and offer the best service to retain our customers. I firmly believe in using the best technology we can afford. We need to be up to date with technology and the Iridesse gives us that.
 
“The other really important focus for us is looking after our excellent staff. All of this combines to deliver great results for our customers.”