Inkjet & Digital Printing
Polaris builds Variable Printing business with Nipson Digital Presses
Thursday 29. May 2008 - Polaris Direct has found the formula for creating a very successful high volume direct mail lettershop business in a short time. The Hooksett, New Hampshire Company opened its doors for business in 2003, and last year did nearly $25 million in business, serving a broad range of customers and industries. Their success can be traced to a number of factors, including choosing the right tools - specifically, high speed digital presses from Nipson.
“Weve built this company by keeping our focus on serving the customer with quality, value, and innovation,” says Joseph Maloy, Polaris President. “Its like anything else,” he continues. “To do the job right, you have to have the right tools. Our Nipson 7000 high speed presses produce clear, sharp 600 dpi imaging, letting us deliver high quality products to our customers in a very timely fashion and at reasonable prices. Moreover, the versatility of the Nipson 7000 printers in terms of what materials they can print on allows us to be very creative in finding solutions for our customers requirements. A great idea is no good unless you can execute it, and with the Nipsons, we are very much a “can-do” supplier.”
Polaris has seven Nipson high speed digital presses in their 72,000 sq. ft. plant in Hooksett. The printers are set up to be able to print on either one or both sides of the web, depending on the job requirements. With their 200 ft./min. print speed, 19.5″ print width, and high duty cycle capability, they are highly productive, generating about 20 million feet of output per month, in 2 shift operation from Monday through Friday. Jobs are run roll-to-roll (using large roll unwinders and rewinders) and then finished separately. This allows Polaris to maximize run time on the Nipson printers for greatest efficiency. To further ensure that the printers are running at their full duty cycle, Polaris also has installed a Nipson 1865 printer for proof printing. Customer proofs, as well as short run jobs, can be run easily on the 1865 at 100 pages per minute without interrupting the productivity of the high speed Nipson production printers.
The versatility of the Nipson 7000s is evident from the range of jobs moving through the plant on any given day. Work can vary from paper statements to direct mail pieces on light card stock to affixed plastic member cards to rebate checks with MICR or other machine readable coding. The Nipson 7000s are able to print MICR characters without changing toner or making adjustments to the press. There even could be multi-part mailers that are printed and then collated, sealed, and mailed. Because the Nipson printers use flash fusing and not heat to fuse the images, the web does not shrink or distort in the printing process, so collation and finishing processes are much easier and more likely to run smoothly.
Heberto Pachon, President of Nipson America, Inc. says of Polaris, “We are delighted to have Polaris as a customer. Our high speed digital printing technology is ideal for the markets they serve, and I am pleased to see them performing so strongly in those areas. We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with Polaris as they continue to find success in this marketplace.”