Color Ink Expands Into New Markets with Fujifilm’s J Press 720S

Color Ink, a Sussex, WI-based print services provider, is changing its approach to traditional print while expanding into new markets with Fujifilm’s J Press 720S, a B2 size sheetfed production inkjet press.
 
“The Fujifilm J Press 720S has transformed our business,” said Todd Meissner, president, Color Ink. “We’re taking jobs off of the 40 inch litho press as well as jobs from our wide format press. We are moving more jobs over to the J Press 720S because it makes good economic sense. The inkjet technology is unbelievable, it produces tremendous quality, and it’s a faster way to produce many of our jobs.”
 
Jim Meissner, Todd’s father, started Color Ink in 1984, as primarily a commercial printer. With the addition of Austin Meissner, Todd’s son, Color Ink is now a third-generation family owned and operated business, with 100,000 square feet within two buildings situated on suburban Milwaukee land that was once a family farm. The operation includes 75 full-time employees, along with an additional head count of up to 50 temporary employees, working up to three shifts a day, five days a week.
  
With a 29.6-inch x 20.9 inch sheet and an output of 2,700 sheets per hour, Fujifilm’s second generation sheetfed J Press 720S is an ideal solution for printers like Color Ink because it offered the quality and robustness of an offset press, and the versatility to handle even the shortest of press runs.
 
“An exciting market that we’re really looking to catapult into with the J Press 720S is folding cartons,” added Austin Meissner. “We understand that the in the folding carton market, especially for the consumer market and brand awareness, hitting brand colors to their full integrity is so vital. A portion of our business, I’d say maybe 15%, caters to the consumer packaging group, and with the J Press 720S, we’re able to more closely match PMS colors that are always challenging to hit.”
 
Printing on-demand and in shorter runs is a key element for Color Ink since more and more print buyers are specifying shorter runs and versioning.
 
“For a lot of the retailers, their store accounts across the country may only be 1,000 stores, or maybe a couple hundred stores,” said Todd Meissner. “When we are producing graphics for each store, we’re talking about run lengths of maybe 200 to 1,000 units, short runs. That’s why the J Press 720S is such a great fit for us. We’re going from one job to another without stopping. It’s the same paper, it’s the same sheet size, but we’re literally printing 10 of this, 20 of this, 500 of that, nonstop, on the fly. Versioning has been just a great tool for us on the J Press 720S, whereas if you think about what you’d have to do on a litho press with plate changes, it’s a big deal.”