Soar Printing is proving that digital is no longer a dirty word for commercial printers With its decision to purchase a second HP Indigo digital press, Auckland-based Soar Printing has served notice that digital printing is a serious and viable technology for commercial printers.

Soar’s decision to purchase the HP Indigo 5000 was made just one year after the company installed its first HP Indigo digital press, the 3050. And the decision to purchase the second press was made simple by the benefits that the 3050 had brought the company.

Managing director Fred Soar believes that the printing industry is going through a major transition as digital print rapidly emerges as a rival to offset. If he’s right, the company is in the perfect position to handle it, as one of the few commercial printers with such high-end digital colour horsepower in-house.

AM International’s Gavin Joyce says that an HP Indigo machine goes far beyond being ‘just’ a digital press: “The quality comes from the fact that it is an offset press,” Joyce says. “It uses an offset process, it prints up to seven colours and it uses liquid ink.” Soar says that he shopped around to look at other makes of digital presses, but kept coming back to HP Indigo.