BARCELONA, Spain, - HP today announced that Astron Group, of Prague, Czech Republic, has added its third HP Scitex TJ8350 Press to meet customer demand and to attract more international brand business.

Established as a prepress and data processing company in 1994, Astron Group has evolved to become one of the largest providers of large and wide format print in the region. Today, with more than 200 employees, and a turnover of €15 million the company, offers the production of digital, digital large format and conventional offset printing services for international corporations and agencies in Central and Eastern Europe.

Astron Group bought is first HP Scitex TJ8300 Press in 2007 and a year later added a second press. These presses, an HP Scitex XL1500 Printer and an HP Scitex XL1200 Printer, along with a growing number of UV curable and dye-based digital printers enabled Astron to become one of the largest producers of large format advertising in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Earlier this year in July, when Astron installed a third TJ press, a TJ8350, it also upgraded the other two presses to HP Scitex TJ8350 Press standards and became the only company in Europe to have three TJ8350 presses under one roof.

"Our decision to buy the third HP Scitex TJ press was based on our overall strategy of re-investing in technologies that have been successful for us, which the first two presses have been," said Tomas Novak, owner, Astron Group. "In addition to increasing our capacity, the additional press also gives us the level of back-up that is required by our agency customers and the national and international brands. Without the capabilities to assure the required short turnaround times, winning such orders is difficult, if not impossible."

Astron Group provides a complete service to its customers and has comprehensive automated finishing capabilities and also offers installation services for all its signage.

"As our relationships with customers grew, so did our offering," continued Novak. "In addition to our large format work, we also provide prepress data preparation, DTP, design and artwork preparation and even publishing, using our traditional offset press. This was an interesting development as we began with digital printing, but as we attracted customers, saw the opportunity to offer traditional offset printing as well."

The ability to use pigmented inks on the presses is another feature that makes them versatile and suited for use for international brand work. In addition to the big brands, customers and end-users include retail chains, telecommunications companies, insurance companies, banks and car importers - all of which have a requirement for consistent, high-quality print.

"The benefits of the HP Scitex TJ8350 Presses enable us to process more jobs during peak periods while during 'normal' periods we can shorten lead times, deliver to tight deadlines and meet our customers' quality expectations," concluded Marek Nemec, publishing and offset director.

For further information about the Astron Group, please visit www.astron.cz.

More information is available at www.youtube.com/hpgraphicarts or follow HP on www.twitter.com/hpgraphicarts.