Belville-based Nu School Digital is using a combination of Xerox digital printers from Cape Office and Bytes Document Solutions for high-end digital printing and high-volume black-and-white jobs, including specialty bound books.
Nu School Digital specialises in high-quality short-run colour printing for the corporate market and high-volume black-and-white book and student guide printing for local universities and bookstores. The company expects the recent influx of businesses migrating back to Cape Town’s northern suburbs to spur demand for high-end digital printing in the area.
Founder and director Garreth Van Wyk, a self-taught printer technician in his own right, said Xerox was the only printer company in consideration when he decided to create the new business.
‘Printing runs in the family. My father owns and runs one of Cape Town’s longest running printing companies, Old School Digital, in Paarden Eiland. In my decade-long experience working in this industry, Xerox is the name I trust above anything else when it comes to reliability, flexibility, colour accuracy, and quality,’ said Van Wyk.
‘The only difficulty came in choosing the two machines I needed, but that was made much easier with the honest advice I always get from the Cape Office team,’ he said. ‘For example, Cape Office director Stuart Daniels was very clear in his assessment of what we needed to get started. Although I’d worked with the top-tier 1000-series Xerox press at Old School Digital, he suggested the more affordable Versant 2100 would be a better fit while we ramped up production, keeping operational costs low and reducing wastage.’
The Xerox Versant 2100 Press ships standard with a range of features designed to streamline common short-run digital printing jobs and reduce waste through a combination of precise print quantity management and fully automated workflows. Automation reduces labour costs – allowing Nu School Digital to get up to speed with only four staff – and reduced turnaround times means jobs are produced and in customers’ hands more quickly.
Dual 2000-sheet trays make it possible to run lightweight, heavyweight and specialty stocks from 52 to 350gsm simultaneously while Auto-Tray Switching and reload-while-run capabilities optimise press time. This level of automation and efficiency does not compromise Xerox’s industry-leading print quality, with the same Ultra HD resolution (2400 x 2400 dpi) print engine and Xerox’s EA Low Melt Dry Ink system found in the company’s top-shelf printers.
‘Nu School Digital is a classic example of a business built to service a very specific and very demanding niche market,’ said Daniels. ‘The combination of a Versant 2100 – which covers all the bases when it comes to high-end digital printing for almost any product type, and the highly-versatile and reliable Xerox D110 copier/printer takes care of almost any high-volume black-and-white jobs, including specialty bound books that Nu School Digital is equipped to produce.’
Van Wyk said that in the short time he’s owned them, the printers have already clocked more than three million clicks between them.
‘In the near future I expect demand to reach a point where we’re running three to five machines out of the same factory space, even though most of our work comes from referrals and word-of-mouth. It’s a hot space to be in right now and we have the best technology and partners in place to make the most of it.’
