Digital Press Helps Iowa In-plant Tackle High Volume

The addition of a new Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C7000 last September has made all the difference to the in-plant at Iowa Bankers Association (IBA) in Johnston, Iowa. As the in-plant's volume began to increase, Todd Palmer, printing coordinator, realized that sharing a four-color Canon imageRUNNER press with the rest of the staff at the company was no longer going to cut it.

"Five years ago, I would have never looked at a copier because of the cost of the machine,” says Palmer. "But we decided that we had to do something to accommodate our volume. We looked at another Canon, but cost-wise, we could not justify it. So I talked to a lot of local printers and many of them recommended the C7000 press.”

Palmer was able to justify the purchase of the new digital press to the IBA management team because the cost per page was less than the company's existing Canon press.

“The purchase made sense since we run a lot of 8x11˝ projects (two-up),” he says. Another major deciding factor in purchasing the press is that it would give the in-plant the ability to produce a client’s annual directory in-house, a job the in-plant had outsourced for many years.

“While the printing of this project in our facility will be a lot of work, it will save the company $11,000 per year,” says Palmer.

Since installing the C7000, the two-employee in-plant has also been able to produce jobs in less time. For example, member statements that used to take a day to print on the Canon, now only take two hours. What Palmer also likes about the machine is its ability to print on demand, its 12x18˝ full-bleed capability, and its ability to print 13x19˝ oversize pages.

Some of the other projects the in-plant produces for its clients include, brochures, color copies, business cards and letterheads. The in-plant uses a PSI LM-3640 envelope printer for printing envelopes and crack-and-peel paper. Another project the in-plant produces is IBA’s official newsletter, Exchange, which it produces (on a Ryobi 3304 press) every two weeks for bank members and business partners.

"While we still use the Canon press for some projects, we have taken most of the volume from that press and have moved it to the C7000,” concludes Palmer. “Even though it has only been a few months, we are already starting to hear positive feedback from our clients in regard to the press’s quality and turnaround time.”