Since 1996, Version Image Plus, a digital printing shop in Laval, Quebec, has been a business that has focused on self-adhesive vinyl applications, such as banners, billboards and fleet graphics for interior and exterior applications. The shop already had a firm background in the grand-format graphics market, creating many building murals and massive graphics projects.

 

As the years have passed, though, Version Image Plus has looked for new ways to grow its clientele and compete with the high-volume capabilities of the screen printing market.

The company recently added two Durst Rho 1000 printers to fill that role, says purchasing manager Claude Joly.

 

With the two new Durst Rho 1000 printers, Version Image Plus can now compete against the screen printing market. The new equipment gives Version Image Plus an edge not only because of speed but also because of quality.

With the new printers, Version Image Plus has significantly increased its production speed, which is one of the main reasons it can now compete with the screen printing market. In fact, each Durst Rho 1000 can produce 150 boards an hour, giving the shop the ability to now complete 300 boards an hour. Joly says the setup process is also straightforward, and little time is required to get the printers running at full speed. In comparison, she says screen printing can be time consuming, especially when multiple screens are needed. 

 

“When you take a file as it is for any digital printer, you just put the file in, RIP it and it’s ready to print,” Joly says. “If you compare that to screen print where you have to do make the screens and all those things, it takes more time.”

 

The image quality of the printers helps Version Image Plus compete with the screen printing market, as well, Joly says. Although screen printing can be fast, Joly doesn’t believe the quality is quite as good. 

 

“You can have the speed in screen print, but you can’t have the same image quality,” Joly says. “Here we can print at 600 dpi with six colors, which look about 1,000 dpi, so with this combination, we can beat anyone in the market.”

 

Now that Version Image Plus has the Durst Rho 1000 printers, business has seen a significant uptick in a short amount of time, Joly says, which came as somewhat of a surprise to the company. While the growth was expected to happen eventually, it came at a much faster rate than anticipated. 

 

This new capability allowed Version Image Plus to print 32,000 boards within one week for the provincial elections. No work had to be outsourced.

“Since we purchased the first Durst Rho 1000, our business grew by almost 25 percent because there are a lot of jobs we couldn’t do, but now we can do them,” Joly says. “And then we bought the second one, and we thought with the second one it would take maybe a year to fill up, but it took a month.”

 

With its new capabilities, Version Image Plus was able to take on a large printing project during the 2011 Canadian provincial election season. For this project, Version Image Plus printed 32,000 boards, measuring 2 feet by 4 feet, in only one week, Joly says. 

 

This was particularly impressive because Version Image Plus worked on prints for the elections in 2009, as well, but had to outsource part of the work. At the time, Version Image Plus did not have the speed it needed to produce such a large amount of work and could only print 35-40 boards within an hour, Joly says. The new Durst Rho 1000s, however, completely changed the game for Version Image Plus and now allows them to keep large projects in-house. 

 

As Version Image Plus moves into the future, Joly expects the company to keep growing. Version Image Plus has always been on the forefront of exploring innovative technologies and industry trends, and that is something the company plans to continue.

 

“We are going to continue to grow,” Joly says. “We know that the market is moving, especially the vinyl banner side, and we are going to pursue new technology and look at targeting new markets, maybe with fabric and other applications like that.”