Konica Minolta South Africa prints for charity at Africa Print 2012
At the recently held Africa Print show, Konica Minolta South Africa put the printed material generated during its daily production hour, which showcased its full production line of digital equipment printing material from start to finish, to very good use.
The company produced high quality printed material for CHOC Childhood Cancer Foundation South Africa over the three days of the show, ultimately delivering 1,920 brochures (A3 double sided – 200gsm gloss), 11,520 DL flyers (double sided – 170gsm gloss), 1,840 posters (A3 – 170gsm gloss), 18,000 business cards (300gsm matt) and 4,500 letterheads (trimmed to A4 – 80gsm Bond) to the foundation on the final day.
Says Leon Minnie, product manager: production systems at Konica Minolta South Africa: “Our mission at this year’s Africa Print show was not just to distribute ‘pretty pictures’, as this results in a huge amount of wastage and, as general practice at these shows, provides print clients with very little information of the machine’s real ability and true quality. We decided rather to find an alternative method to demonstrate our quality of equipment, while also using it for a worthy cause and, providing the type of material that could be used by the organisation well into the future. CHOC was in great need of marketing collateral, and we felt that this would be a very valuable project with which to assist. By publicly demonstrating our complete belief in our products, this idea also highlighted that Konica Minolta South Africa is committed to both innovation and the requirements of the printing industry.”
All products produced for CHOC were printed, trimmed, creased, folded and wrapped and underwent the entire print process – from submission, workflow, calibration and colour management, printing on multiple devices and even using off-line/ near-line finishing – with great success.
“Through using these finishing processes, we showed that digital printing can be successfully creased, folded and trimmed without cracking, providing printers with a high quality finished product.
“Konica Minolta South Africa received the artwork from CHOC, which was supplied in PDF and Illustrator formats. We used imposition software to create templates for the business cards, DL flyers and letterheads, which were then set up according to the finishing machinery from IPEX – a Morgana Digi Fold Pro (creaser and folder) and Morgana Card Plus business card cutter with two different blade sets to accommodate not only business cards but the DL flyers as well. IPEX also used a programmable guillotine machine to trim the letterheads, posters and brochures with ease and efficiency,” explains Minnie.
“All of the colour machines were calibrated and FOGRA certified to maintain colour consistency during the three days and to verify if any colour fluctuation had taken place during the show and to what degree. This is because the environment at the show is far from ideal and solutions like this can minimise time correcting colour and wastage. With our colour management solution, colour consistency day to day and month to month is possible, taking the guess work out of colour manipulation and correction. It is also possible to obtain uniformed colour across different printing processes, from wide format to digital and even litho. We are happy to report that all of the machines were consistent in productivity and colour, both during the runs and day after day.”
Desré Murray, CHOC business development manager, states that a contribution of this nature is significant and adds immeasurable value to an organisation like CHOC. “Konica Minolta South Africa’s generous contribution was very well timed, as we had run out of our brochures and did not have the budget to have them printed. CHOC is very grateful for this donation and believe that the high quality prints will serve us well far into the future.”
Konica Minolta South Africa also printed 3,125 black and white booklets on 12,500 sheets for the Dullstroom Birds of Prey and Rehabilitation Centre on the brand new B951 and B1250 machines. In total, the company printed more than 37,000 A4 images during its production hour at the Africa Print show.