Palo Alto, Calif. – HP today announced that Leatherback Printing has selected and installed an HP Indigo 7000 Digital Press, and is using the press's true offset- quality imaging to gain new opportunities in high-end commercial printing.

The firm's digital press technology installation, which also includes an HP SmartStream Production Pro Print Server and an HP Indigo Ink Mixing Station for PANTONE-licensed custom spot color creation, makes the Kirkland, Wash., print service provider (PSP) more competitive on many of the jobs it bids without forcing company management to forgo its strong belief in providing the best-quality printing available. 

"Craftsmanship is not a thing of the past – PSPs that have built their businesses by offering impeccable quality are moving ahead in digital print with HP Indigo press and HP SmartStream workflow solutions," said Jan Riecher, vice president and general manager, Graphics Solutions Business – Americas, HP. "HP Indigo digital press solutions meet designers' and print buyers' stringent requirements, which opens new opportunities for companies like Leatherback Printing."    

Leatherback Printing uses its six-color HP Indigo 7000 to print a variety of products, including marketing collateral, point-of-purchase materials, books and small-format packaging, for Fortune 100 firms and other clients. The press provides efficient, just-in-time manufacturing and a level of reliable, repeatable quality consistent with the company's high-end letterpress and offset printing operations.

Heavy coverage and high quality, delivered faster with HP Indigo
The HP Indigo press and HP SmartStream digital printing workflow help Leatherback cut turnaround times. The press's fast-drying inks magnify the turnaround-time advantage, given the fact that delivering top quality often means printing five- or six-color work with heavy ink coverage.

One job Leatherback prints on vinyl media can take weeks to dry when printed on an offset press, but it comes off the HP Indigo 7000 dry and ready for finishing. This efficiency advantage allows Leatherback to offer greater value to customers on many jobs, such as a jewelry catalog where the HP Indigo 7000 cut the turnaround time in half, or a 1,500-run, 120-page manual printed on the 7000 in four days instead of the typical nine.

Prior to selecting HP, Leatherback Printing had all but sworn off installing a digital press – even though it affected the company's ability to bid on short- and medium-run work – because of quality and reliability concerns.

In fact, the company once had the unfortunate experience of outsourcing an important digital printing job to a PSP that had a competing digital press model, but the job arrived late because of an equipment breakdown. To make matters worse, the job's poor quality led Leatherback's client to ultimately reject the job altogether.

Growing with digital print
A trade show demo of the HP Indigo 7000 changed the firm's perception of digital. Now, with the press installed, Leatherback Printing is on pace to record double-digit growth, in part because it has found a digital solution that complements the firm's reputation for high quality.

"Even though it meant we were losing some bids, I was never a believer in digital printing until I saw the HP Indigo 7000 Digital Press," said Grant Cundy, owner and president, Leatherback Printing. "With our HP Indigo, we deliver a quality product, on time and within budget."

The HP Indigo 7000 Digital Press delivers fast production speeds of 120 high-quality four-color letter-size pages per minute. Designed to significantly increase the break-even point of digital compared with offset, the HP Indigo 7000 is an ideal press for the production of large numbers of static jobs with run lengths ranging from one copy into the thousands, as well as variable-data work requiring the "every page is different" capabilities of digital.

The HP Indigo 7000 also offers one of the widest digital color gamuts available with 4-, 6- or 7-color PANTONE-licensed emulation including Pantone Goe, as well as PANTONE-licensed off-press mixing of spot colors. In addition, the HP Indigo 7000 Digital Press incorporates HP DreamColor Technologies, a certified system of color technologies and sciences that makes it easy to produce accurate, predictable and consistent color across a series of digital color devices.