Fannon Fine Printing Replaces Three Presses with a Roland 500

ALEXANDRIA, VA—06/06/07—It’s spring cleaning time at Fannon Fine Printing in Alexandria, Virginia. After a three-year search, Daniel Fannon and his team are installing a Roland 500 29-inch press. The six-color-plus-coating system replaces a pressroom full of equipment that includes a 40-inch six-color Roland Rekord, a 20-inch four-color GTO, and an 18-inch Quickmaster DI direct imaging machine.

Taking advantage of the autonomy that is inherent in a family-owned business, Fannon did not have to report to a board of directors or a flock of shareholders, instead he listened to his marketplace before zeroing in on a new press. The voices included those of the top designers and corporate marketing executives in Washington D.C. metro area.

“This was a very difficult decision,” he recalls. “We spent the better part of three years trying to determine how we should upgrade our current equipment. We considered 20, 29, and 40-inch presses, but no option seemed to position us to exceed our clients’ expectations until we landed upon the Roland 500.”

Finding a Flexible Format

At issue was expanding the application flexibility of the Fannon pressroom, while ramping up its performance to be state-of-the-art. Presently, Fannon’s 40-inch Rekord delivers award-winning print quality on larger jobs. Its GTO handles mid-level projects. And the Quickmaster DI prints the shorter runs. In its search, the company needed to find a single press that could handle all three assignments more efficiently, while putting more applications on the table. MAN Roland provided the solution.

“The Roland 500 is the fastest 29-inch press in the world and we are confident that with it, we can compete in the existing 40-inch market,” Fannon says. “We went with MAN Roland because we felt that they truly wanted to partner with Fannon Fine Printing to make us successful.”

But it was more than a feeling that powered the decision. Once Fannon realized that the six-up sheet size was the format for its future, it developed a systematic process that scrutinized all options offered by all manufacturers in that configuration.