ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. (June 30, 2008) -- Investment in leading-edge technology is a key to growth and success in the printing business. Flagship Press, Inc. has done an excellent job of proving that correct.

The North Andover, Mass.-based commercial printer continually reinvests in technology and infrastructure. Since its founding in 1950, the company has grown through targeted acquisitions of equipment and assets. Today, Flagship Press occupies 85,000 square feet of modern production space, staffed by 130 employees. Not surprisingly, Flagship Press' revenues have kept pace with the firm's structural growth. Annual sales currently exceed $20 million.

Flagship Press has embarked on yet another expansion aimed at improving its competitiveness in the production of short-run, custom color publications. The company purchased the Screen Truepress Jet520, a roll-fed inkjet press designed to print full-color images and text using variable data.

"The Truepress Jet520 offers faster printing speeds and the capacity to produce significantly higher volumes at a lower cost than our current lineup of digital printing devices," said Christopher Poor, vice president.

The Truepress Jet520 prints on inkjet paper, standard paper and uncoated stock up to 20.5 inches wide. The roll-fed paper transport system enables quicker turnarounds on high-volume projects. The press can print 210 feet per minute, the equivalent of 55,000 impressions per hour. It features a maximum imaging resolution of 720 dpi x 720 dpi.

"When we began researching inkjet technology, our first reaction was, 'Will the printing be of commercially acceptable quality?'" Poor recalled. "In comparing inkjet to toner-based printing, we came away extremely impressed by how far inkjet has evolved in terms of quality, speed and reliability."

Flagship Press delivers a full array of print-related services to publishers in the educational and high-tech markets.

"Many of the textbooks and manuals we print have high page counts," Poor pointed out. "We may print anywhere from two copies to 1,500 copies of a particular title with between 200 and 1,000 pages each."

The company boasts complete electronic prepress capabilities, with an integrated computer-to-plate workflow. An extensive postpress operation contains folders, gluers, die cutters, saddle stitchers and perfect binders.

The Screen Truepress Jet520 is an important tool to complement the firm's two-color through eight-color offset presses. A six-color, 28-inch Mitsubishi plus coater is accompanied by five 40-inch models, including three perfectors (a two-color Heidelberg, a two-color Komori and a six-color Mitsubishi with an aqueous coating unit) and two straight presses (a six-color Mitsubishi with aqueous coater and an eight-color Komori with both offset and hybrid UV capabilities).

Two Xerox iGen3 digital color production presses and three Xerox DocuTech 6180 monochrome printers round out the company's digital print stable. The digital printing department produces software documentation textbooks and manuals on demand, along with prototypes, samples, short-run color covers and variable data mail pieces.

"We have large publishing clients that we have been doing business with for many years for whom we print short-run college textbooks," Poor said. "The customers were looking to migrate much of that work to color. That was a driving force behind our decision to purchase an inkjet press."

In settling on the Truepress Jet520, officials of Flagship Press traveled to Screen USA's corporate headquarters in Rolling Meadows, Ill., to witness live press demonstrations. They also solicited comments on its performance from existing press users.

"The feedback we received was very positive," Poor said. "The Truepress Jet520 has a proven record in the field. In addition, Screen has established itself in the marketplace for continuous-feed, high-speed inkjet equipment."

Flagship Press' Truepress Jet520 is configured as a dual-engine duplex model, enabling the press to print both sides of the web roll in one pass. Flagship Press outfitted the press with a Standard Hunkeler Gen6 paper-handling system for high-performance unwinding, consistent web tension, rotary cutting, perfing, web merging and precision stacking. The double-cut capability allows full-bleed trimming across and inline with the web. Perfectly stacked book blocks with edge-to-edge color exit the system ready for downstream processing. Inline folding capabilities will be added later in 2008.

Poor believes the press will open up opportunities to branch out into new markets.

"We see personalized marketing materials as a definite area of growth for us," he said. "The Truepress Jet520 is capable of producing 22 million pages a month running fully staffed around the clock."