02.16.24
Agfa is celebrating the completion of the first UK installation of its fully automated Onset X3 HS print engine, at Midlands-based cardboard engineering specialist, N Smith & Co.
It has been a sizeable investment for the business, which was determined to specify a machine that would support their business growth aspirations. According to managing director Nigel Reynolds, the whole process has been very quick, and they would have struggled to get through a recent surge in business along with a lengthy breakdown on an existing machine without the new printer.
“Our experience with Agfa has been good right from the start and we really didn’t make the selling process easy for them,” Reynolds noted. “Since 2013, we have purchased five digital print machines including two Incas, an Arizona and an HP Scitex in 2018.
“We learned a lot during those purchases and this time had very specific objectives,” said Reynolds. “We wanted to go to the maximum spec with this new machine to reduce the strain on our existing printers as well as to satisfy growth with existing customers. We also wanted it to take the business to the next level to allow us to look for new opportunities and move into new markets.”
N Smith & Co was established in the center of Birmingham in 1901 making solid board boxes for components in the automotive industry. It was a labor-intensive process and by the 1950s they employed around 100 people and moved to their current site in Tividale, Oldbury.
They continued with carton solid board boxes that housed industrial nails and hinges etc. through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and then added corrugated box production to the business. The company passed to many generations of the original family up to the late 1990s when they went through a management buyout.
They made conventional boxes only until the late 1990s when they started to use both silk screen and litho print for their products provided by external suppliers. In the early 2000s they bought a screen print business and started in-house print production on the boxes they manufacture and in 2013 they purchased their first digital press. The business now employs 70 staff across three sites.
The team from N Smith & Co initially contacted James Argent from Agfa in May 2023. They then visited Agfa in Antwerp to view the different options. It was the first demo that the Agfa technical team had delivered on the Onset X3 HS since the acquisition, but they passed with flying colors.
“We sent some horrible print files and really bad substrates to Agfa in advance of our visit just to replicate some of our worst scenarios and for them to demonstrate on,” said Kerry Tyers, director and GM at N Smith. “The Agfa guys were brilliant and pretty much solved every problem. They convinced us it was the right machine.”
It has been a sizeable investment for the business, which was determined to specify a machine that would support their business growth aspirations. According to managing director Nigel Reynolds, the whole process has been very quick, and they would have struggled to get through a recent surge in business along with a lengthy breakdown on an existing machine without the new printer.
“Our experience with Agfa has been good right from the start and we really didn’t make the selling process easy for them,” Reynolds noted. “Since 2013, we have purchased five digital print machines including two Incas, an Arizona and an HP Scitex in 2018.
“We learned a lot during those purchases and this time had very specific objectives,” said Reynolds. “We wanted to go to the maximum spec with this new machine to reduce the strain on our existing printers as well as to satisfy growth with existing customers. We also wanted it to take the business to the next level to allow us to look for new opportunities and move into new markets.”
N Smith & Co was established in the center of Birmingham in 1901 making solid board boxes for components in the automotive industry. It was a labor-intensive process and by the 1950s they employed around 100 people and moved to their current site in Tividale, Oldbury.
They continued with carton solid board boxes that housed industrial nails and hinges etc. through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and then added corrugated box production to the business. The company passed to many generations of the original family up to the late 1990s when they went through a management buyout.
They made conventional boxes only until the late 1990s when they started to use both silk screen and litho print for their products provided by external suppliers. In the early 2000s they bought a screen print business and started in-house print production on the boxes they manufacture and in 2013 they purchased their first digital press. The business now employs 70 staff across three sites.
The team from N Smith & Co initially contacted James Argent from Agfa in May 2023. They then visited Agfa in Antwerp to view the different options. It was the first demo that the Agfa technical team had delivered on the Onset X3 HS since the acquisition, but they passed with flying colors.
“We sent some horrible print files and really bad substrates to Agfa in advance of our visit just to replicate some of our worst scenarios and for them to demonstrate on,” said Kerry Tyers, director and GM at N Smith. “The Agfa guys were brilliant and pretty much solved every problem. They convinced us it was the right machine.”