Swindon-based commercial B1 printing company Acorn Press has expanded its in-house POS offering and won new contracts off the back of investment in a Ricoh Pro TF6251 UV flatbed and a Veloblade flatbed CNC router.
“We have quite a broad customer base and those customers are buying POS products, which we can now offer alongside our litho and digital work,” said Press MD Simon Evers “The Ricoh machine is being run on a single day shift currently and is constantly being used.”
Founded in 1979, Acorn Press underwent as n MBO in September 2021 and has since invested heavily in certain areas of the business to enhance its offering. This included wide-format print, with the Ricoh Pro TF6251 installed in June of this year as part of its expansion effort.
The company was already running a roll-to-roll machine for work such as posters and pop-up displays but required a new printer to address a rise in demand for specific types of work – it was receiving more enquiries about corex and foamex work, which it was previously not able to produce in house. The company then secured a contract for a large finance business that included certain POS material, which it was having to outsource at an approximate cost of £300,000. As a result, it opted to invest in the new Ricoh printer to bring this, and other signage work, in house.
“We decided on this model as it has the roll-to-roll option and also offers white ink,” Acorn Press said Evers. “The main factors for selecting the Ricoh solution were the cost-effectiveness of running the printer, the speed of the machine, and the fact that the samples we produced for the finance company matched previous work very well. The machine offered everything we needed to facilitate that project.”
Recent work printed on the Ricoh Pro TF6251 includes estate agent corex boards; signage on 3mm, 5mm and 10mm foamex; aluminium dibonds and acrylic, POS strut cards on rigid display boards; and even Christmas trees on airboard for retail stores.
“The roll option means we can print on most substrates and have also produced floor graphics, wallpapers and window displays on ultra-clear vinyls,” Evers said. “There seems no limit to the variety of POS we can produce and with the printer’s speed we are producing work same day for certain customers.
“Since the machine was installed, we have had so much demand and enquiries for all sorts of work. It has opened new avenues and helped us win new contracts.”
