Lönnberg goes for further high-end POS growth with Screen Truepress Jet W3200UV investment

Finnish print provider Lönnberg Print & Promo is targeting further growth in high-quality large-format digital POS work by investing in a Screen Truepress Jet W3200UV HS wide-format flatbed printer, supplied by Signcom.

Founded in 1922, Lönnberg is one of Finland’s leading printers, with 170 employees and annual sales of €30 million. The company has three plants in Helsinki, a fourth in Ylivieska and describes itself as Finland’s “most versatile printing and marketing company”. The claim is supported by an impressive variety of products, from commercial print — brochures, publications and retail advertising — to POS, packaging, exhibition booths and interiors. Lönnberg’s line-up of sheet-fed offset presses and large- and small-format digital printers prints on an equally broad range of substrates — paper, cardboard, plastic, board, adhesive material and fabric. Clients can also call on a thriving services division for support such as digital content management, cross-media and direct marketing, and print management and logistics. A recent acquisition has taken the company into the label printing sector and taken turnover past the €28 million mark.

The new Truepress Jet W3200UV HS is Lönnberg’s first printer from Screen. Lönnberg moved into digital in 2007 with a Vutek printer, partly in response to reducing print runs but also to pursue opportunities in short-run exhibition graphics and signage. Since then the company has run large-format flatbed machines from Fuji and Durst, as well as roll-fed printers from Mutoh and Mimaki.

CEO Jarkko Viheriävaara says the company decided to invest in a new machine at the beginning of 2016. “The bulk of our work is still printed offset, but the gap between that and digital is narrowing as the latter grows quickly. In the last few years, digital has become about more than simply handling short runs economically, although that’s still important. Digital has enabled us to expand our portfolio considerably by printing onto new materials and to handle larger sizes than we can on our offset presses. So, we needed more capacity.”

He adds, the new printer was chosen to also enable the company to offer new applications. “When we moved into digital we took pains to change the way we sell print. At one extreme, we invested in new estimating technology, recognising that digital jobs are typically smaller in value. At the other, we taught our sales people to sell added-value solutions, to act more as consultants than sales people.”

Jarkko first saw the Truepress Jet W3200UV HS at FESPA Digital in March last year, then caught up the printer a few months later at drupa, where the decision was made. “We were really impressed with the Truepress’s combination of productivity and quality. We handle a lot of corrugated materials, and the printer can handle this at 150 square meters an hour. But what really excited us is the way it handles premium-quality multiple-layer work without compromising on that productivity. With some printers the operator has to send each layer separately, but the Truepress Jet W3200UV HS applies multiple layers in a single pass. That not only saves time, but the increased ink thickness gives the output a really fresh look and feel. Because we operate at the very top end of the POS market, this is a big plus.”

The Screen Truepress Jet W3200UV HS is designed for high-speed, high-quality production of short-run, high-impact sign and display work, including exhibition graphics and retail signage, posters, product decoration, architectural signage, backlit displays, etc. Its design incorporates a number of features to increase both productivity and quality. The advanced-design printhead modules and Truepress UV inks combine to produce sellable, top-quality graphics at high speed. Linear drives provide exceptionally smooth, controlled and accurate motion of the print carriage, while retractable lay pins provide fast substrate positioning to ensure accurate, repeatable registration, especially on double-sided printing.

The multi-layer function enables perfect inline registration of up to eight independent image layers for sophisticated front/back overprinting of quality backlit and variable day/night graphics. Architectural and interior applications benefit from overprinting extra ink layers to draw attention to selected objects on an image. Multiple layers also create high-impact window graphics that can be viewed from both sides with no show-through.

The Truepress investment, says Jarkko, is in line with Lönnberg’s strategy of continuing to add capabilities to offer clients the broadest possible range of products, something that the size of the Finnish market dictates. “We have absolutely made the right choice as since installation it has truly printed a huge volume. Finland is a small market, and we are already a big player, so too much specialisation is not an option. Instead we must keep building our portfolio. This is one reason why we acquired the label printing business, because packaging and labels are markets where there is still considerable growth potential, particularly for digital. The Truepress will help us grow in this market.”

Truepress Jet W3200UV HS