Founded in 1992 as a prepress trade house, Kinetic Vision has since made a highly successful transition to become one of the country’s leading digital print operations. And it has a swag of Pride In Print medals to prove it. Driven by its focus on quality and a new HP Indigo 5000 digital press, the future looks even brighter for the Wellington company.

When Kinetic Vision made the move to digital print five years ago, the technology it chose was the HP Indigo 1000. Having built its prepress business on a reputation of quality, the company was determined to maintain its standing once it switched to the world of digital print. A thorough investigation of digital print technologies at the time led them to conclude that the HP Indigo liquid ink technology provided a significant quality edge over toner based machines.

That certainly has been proven true, with 13 Pride In Print awards, including eight gold medals, to show for their efforts over the last few years.

Kinetic Vision is a wholly owned subsidiary of Datamail, which in turn is wholly owned by New Zealand Post and the purchase of the HP Indigo 5000 was, in part, a direct result of this relationship, with the new machine intended to support the new Kinetic 121 brand that Datamail have developed to focus on trans-promotional and high-end direct mail applications, involving long variable data print runs. The quality, productivity and variable data capability of the 5000 made it the ideal choice to fulfil this role.

“The 5000 is a Godsend,” McCready says. “According to the technical specs, it’s double the speed of the 1000, but in reality we are getting four to five times the productivity that we were getting before. It is just so much quicker to get up to an acceptable level of quality. It is pretty much just a case of hitting the print button and the result is there. It’s really a quantum leap.

“There is no comparison between the quality of what’s coming off toner-based machines and what’s coming off the Indigo. You are getting offset quality on the Indigo. As a result, we are now genuinely able to compete with offset on many jobs.”

Special colours are an increasingly important part of Kinetic Vision’s work, and the HP Indigo 5000 allows much more efficient production of jobs that involve them. A job involving a special colour that previously took two and a half hours, now takes half an hour, according to McCready.

Another bonus of the HP Indigo 5000 is the digital matt finishing that allows Kinetic Vision to add an embellishment on certain jobs such as boutique invitation cards. “It makes a huge difference to some jobs.”

The difficulty for the company now is ensuring that the finishing department is able to keep up with the speed of the HP Indigo 5000. Since there has been a doubling of impressions following its installation, Kinetic Vision has been forced to employ a couple of extra people in the finishing area, and are looking at ways to make it more automated.

The integration of te new machine into Kinetic Vision’s existing workflow has been made easier by it ease of use.

“It is much easier to operate than the 1000, McCready says.  “Whereas previously we would have had two to three hours of downtime each day, now we are down to less than one. The 1000 was great, but it was a first generation model after all. The 5000 has been completely reengineered and it is a really great machine.”

Another benefit of the 5000 identified by Kinetic Vision has been its ability to perform as a workhorse, in a way that digital presses are traditionally thought unable.

“Last week, we did 40,000 impressions, running the machine seven hours non-stop. It means we are able to attack much bigger runs and to run the machine for longer. It really loves the big runs.

“The 5000 has got us jobs that would previously have gone offset because of the demand for quality. It has allowed us to jump another quality level.”