Large-format Printing -- Many Profit Paths

“The older machine was not a dinosaur, but the difference between 1998 and 2008 are 100 times,” notes Dan Domino, OCC vice president of sales. “We’ve had the press in operation since this past February, and we’ve already put 17 million impressions on it. We couldn’t have done that with the older machine. Our setups are cut in half, and we added an X-Rite color management system to it, so we can maintain color consistency from prepress through the end.”

Domino says the company calculated ROI at about 18 months, primarily because OCC has been able to expand its market. In addition to producing multi-color boxes, the company makes displays and movie theatricals, along with its one-sided labels for the corrugated market and SBS top sheets. Its primary geographic market is Mexico. A popular application for that market is the coated, one-sided labels that are affixed to big screen TV boxes. This has allowed OCC to expand its capacity, particularly in Mexico. In addition to breaking new ground in terms of folding opportunities, OCC is also exploring lenticular printing.

Sometimes it only takes a tweak to help printers smash through their limitations. Take Edison Litho of North Bergen, NJ, which recently held an open house in honor of its 50 years in business. The shop has been turning out large-format printing for the last 25 years. Its sales force had been limited, to a degree, due to what could and could not be run on-press, according to Joe Ostreicher, sales coordinator and COO.

“We were getting requests for printing on plastic,” he says. “When you run [a job] for a long time, the cylinders heat up. For paper it’s OK, but plastic stretches and ink can’t adhere to the plastic as well. It doesn’t dry well, and there’s no registration between the colors. You’ve got a major mess.”