Konica Minolta South Africa will exhibit at the Africa Print Expo, taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre from 21-23rd August, assisting visitors who want to invest in digital printing and want to learn about the array of options available.
At the exhibition, Konica Minolta South Africa staff members will be standing by to assist the attendees with a host of services and queries, showcasing its award winning digital presses to delegates and media, and giving one-on-one demonstrations of our kit and software solutions.
The companys technical staff will be available to discuss the actual design, structure and technology of our machines; effectively demonstrating what makes our presses reliable and consistent. Sales staff will be present to demonstrate our digital presses, and assist with any queries pertaining price, configuration and running costs; whilst our software specialists can advise on the range of production software solutions available. Our product manager will also be present to answer any questions pertaining to the equipment, dealer franchises, and future products from Konica Minolta Japan.
New, and existing clients are encouraged to visit the Konica Minolta South Africa stand so that the company can assess their current solution with the view to improving on it, adding further value and reducing their printing costs. Should attendees be pressed for time, staff at the info hub within its stand will make note of any queries and contact details for a future follow up.
Konica Minolta South Africa’s innovative Image Cubes will also be available to potential print suppliers interested in investing in a digital press. This box contains print samples, from both colour and black and white (B&W) production machines, on the widest range of media ever tested in South Africa.
Colour presses
Konica Minolta will feature its bizhub PRESS C6000/C7000 digital colour press, which combines high quality and low cost. With the ability to output up to 60/71 high-quality A4 images per minute, the C6000/C7000 consistently delivers brilliant colour jobs on time and on budget. Whether you are printing a simple corporate newsletter, a full-colour saddle stitched catalogue or thousands of direct mail flyers with variable data, the C6000/C7000 can handle just about anything. The bizhub PRESS C6000 has been lauded globally, with the European Digital Press Association (EDP) recently naming the C6000 as the Best Production Cut-Sheet Colour Printer of 2011; while independent testing laboratory, Business Equipment Research and Test Laboratories Inc. (BERTL) awarded the C6000/C7000 with the title of Best Colour Light Production System. These awards only stand to emphasise the quality of these machines.
In addition, the company demonstrate the award winning BERTL 5 Star bizhub PRESS C8000 at the exhibition. The 5 Star rating is the highest possible product rating from BERTL and highlights the fact that the bizhub PRESS C8000 has set a new standard for quality for end-to-end production solutions.
Konica Minolta South Africa will also showcase the bizhub PRESS C70hc. Featuring High Chroma toner, a Konica Minolta technology that elevates colour, graphics and photographic imagery to transcendent levels, the C70hc has output capabilities of up to 71 pages per minute.
Black and white presses
Central reprographic departments, digital print service providers and all high-volume printing environments can now enter a new realm of professionalism with the bizhub PRO B951 and the flexible, highly productive monochrome production systems, the bizhub PRESS B1052 and bizhub PRESS B1250 models, by Konica Minolta South Africa.
Highlights of the bizhub PRO B951 are its affordability, extraordinarily high print resolution and outstanding media flexibility, as well as a tone curve utility that comes with the printer, maxed out paper capacity and professional finishing options. With a print speed of 95 A4 pages per minute (ppm), this new entry-level system offers an excellent price-performance ratio without compromising on quality. It offers a wide range of lines per inch (lpi) options – from 40 to 300lpi – and delivers high media flexibility: it can print on paper from 40 to 300 grams per square metre (gsm) with an option for compatibility with 350gsm paper. The system’s standard paper format is SRA3 and it holds up to 9,000 sheets. The machine offers a variety of finishing options, such as stapling for up to 100 sheets, booklet making and z-folding, as well as post insertion, GBC punching and automatic ring binding.
The bizhub PRESS B1052 and B1250 systems provide a print resolution of 1,200×1,200dpi and offer high media flexibility. This includes the option to print on 40 to 350gsm paper in single-sided (simplex) printing and on up to 300gsm for duplex prints. Paper sizes up to 324x483mm are supported and selectable through an intelligent media catalogue. Print speeds range from 105 A4 ppm and 60 A3 ppm for the bizhub PRESS B1052, and 125 A4 ppm and 70 A3 ppm for the bizhub PRESS B1250. These two models also feature advanced software such as a professional screening utility and an extra utility for tone curve adjustments. Each printer will carry and seamlessly process a maximum load of 18,000 sheets of paper through a vacuum feeder. Over 50 configurations are available by combining a wide variety of finishers such as an automatic ring binder, a perfect binding unit, a finisher for professional saddle stitching, as well as a stacker and many more. Other features include an exclusive envelope kit for envelope printing and an optional de-curling unit with a humidifier unit.
Solutions and applications
Africa Print visitors interested in software solutions and applications will also be able to see Konica Minolta South Africa’s colour management, variable data printing (VDP), Web2Print, and Photo-PRESS (photo book) solutions in action.
Konica Minolta Colour Care is an application package that defines, achieves and maintains product-specific colour quality standards for any bizhub PRESS colour device installed according to the compulsory Konica Minolta Color Care procedure. Users can rely on the Konica Minolta Color Care service, allowing them to benefit from a professional quality assurance tool that facilitates profile creation and evaluation, which in turn assists in maintaining the pre-defined quality standard. To ensure a highly consistent print quality and the best possible print results at all times, quality targets are required for all printing devices. Through continuous quality control and review, colour prints can be optimised and authentic colour reproduction guaranteed. The benefit of this approach to quality assurance is maximised efficiency for optimised budgets. Konica Minolta South Africa also offers a more advanced colour management solution that is not limited to digital cut sheet machines or brands. This solution supports litho, as well as wide format printing, and can be integrated to MIS systems.
Any business operating within the printing sector – from commercial and digital to print-for-pay providers – must constantly strive to diversify by embracing new and enhanced business opportunities. With the Photo-PRESS photo book software, Konica Minolta South Africa is providing the ideal solution for local print providers to do just this. The comprehensive photo book offering covers the entire process from the business front-end to the back-end production; featuring a straightforward workflow and transparent costs. This solution is the easiest way for print providers to offer professional albums, calendars, greeting cards, posters and more to customers; as well as enhancing offered services to existing clients, helping to attract new customers, and assisting in increasing turnover, margins and incremental profit.
The use of a variable data printing (VDP) solution can assist in reaching audiences in a more cost effective, direct, specific and relevant manner – all without sacrificing quality. VDP enables organisations to set themselves apart from their competitors through personalised promotional communications such as advertisements, direct mailers, brochures and flyers, business cards, newsletters, discount coupons, tickets and letters. Elements such as text, graphics and images can be amended from one printed piece to the next using information from a database or external file, without stopping or slowing down the printing process. The same applies to transactional and business documents such as invoices and statements, reports, labels, certificates, policies and multi-part business forms.
The combination of a VDP application with a Web2Print solution allows users to make a more strategic investment in print media and improve the way they currently go about their day to day activities. Web2Print is a broad term that refers to the practice of doing print business using web sites. The growing popularity of the internet has opened up opportunities for commercial printers to allow their customers to submit print jobs, do online prepress reviews, and design items (such as calendars, postcards, photo books etc.) directly on a website using rich user interfaces.
