Electronics For Imaging, Inc., reported that UK-based The Delta Group has acquired its third EFI™ Nozomi press, an EFI Nozomi 14000 SD single-pass printer for sign and display. This printer adds to two previous Nozomi acquisitions, a Nozomi C18000 printer for corrugated and a Nozomi 18000+ LED printer for sign and display, rounding out its high-volume digital production capability which will help them finish their migration from offset to digital. The EFI Nozomi 14000 SD printer was designed to specifically meet the needs of the sign and display graphics market, giving users the opportunity to significantly improve speed to market and increase profitability with a wide range of substrates and brilliant colour quality. Visitors to drupa can view the Nozomi 14000 SD printer at EFI’s booth, located in Hall 9, Stand A20-1 at the show.
The privately owned The Delta Group, in business for more than 35 years, is an end-to-end visual communications solutions provider predominantly serving the retail industry. Headquartered in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, the company has four other locations around the UK, including in Dublin, Ireland. With 680 staff and revenue just north of £100 million, the company offers a wide range of services, from creative, to manufacturing, installation, digital signage and more. The company is in the final stages of opening a new, highly sustainable facility that will replace the current hub center.
The Delta Group was the first company in the UK to install a Nozomi press. “Once we have made the transition to our new facility,” said Martin Shipp, the group’s chief operating officer, “I believe we will be the first company in the world to have three Nozomis under one roof.”
Less space, more throughput, with maximum efficiency and speed
“With our distributed platform, we receive orders centrally and distribute them to the site best suited for the type of work required,” explained Shipp. “Meeting the customer’s requested delivery date is paramount to us.
“In our main facility,” Shipp said, “we had 13 flatbeds running, and each flatbed requires a space the size of a tennis court to have sufficient working space around it. But with the Nozomis being up to five or six times faster than even the fastest multi-pass machines, we have been able to reduce our flatbed footprint down to about five across our network.”
Shipp explained that the company has an efficient workflow in place, including customer-facing portals, and many jobs run through automatically where the first human touch is taking the prints off the back end of the printer, with some 500 orders per day being printed in this way. He also noted that whereas in the past, the company would produce overruns of a dozen or more in case some sheets had defects. Thanks to the inline quality control cameras on the Nozomi printers, he said, they now only run one or two sheets over.
Key drivers for The Delta Group in shifting from offset and flatbeds to Nozomi printers were the shortened turn times and run lengths. Shipp explained, “Historically, retailers would order run lengths of 3,000 or more, suitable for offset. But now, instead of campaigns having five different items with a couple thousand of each, we are more commonly seeing campaigns that contain 250 different items with an order quantity of 500-ish each. So, it has really pushed the transition from analogue to digital for the group.”
Shipp and his team first saw the Nozomi printer in Spain after seeing the technology reviewed in the trade press. “That’s where we started, and over the years, we have realized that Nozomi is clearly the most reliable press we have ever owned. Downtime is extremely minimal, and we get great remote support from Spain. We are now producing more than five million square metres on each one of the Nozomis each year with virtually no downtime.”
