Langenhagen, Germany – Totem, ranked by publishers as top award-winning digital printing house in Poland, has moved into inkjet production with Konica Minolta by investing in its AccurioJet KM-1 production system.

Digital book production is the big growth trend in the highly competitive book publishing sector, where Totem sees important new business opportunities by replacing its toner systems and moving offset work to the Konica Minolta’s B2+ inkjet printer. Huge improvement efficiencies, highly stable colour reproduction and a fast return on investment were other key factors in the purchase decision.

Micha? Rejnowski, CEO of Totem.com.pl, said: “We are continuously improving our work processes and introducing latest technology. The AccurioJet KM-1 has an innovative LED inkjet printing system capable of duplex sheet handling. This enables us to quickly move work to finishing with perfectly flat sheets and offset quality results. This is what our customers demanded. It is allowing us to quickly execute small to medium orders to our clients who are demanding faster turnaround of jobs. Within three weeks of the machine arriving we had produced over 200,000 B2+ sheets.

“We like the high quality of its colour reproduction, its simplicity of operation and the multitude of supported formats offered. Also, Konica Minolta’s Dot Freeze Technology guarantees colour registration and image stability and we can print on standard offset stocks without any pre-coat. Our priority is the satisfaction of our customers and the AccurioJet KM-1 is helping us to achieve that extremely effectively.”

He added: “The whole Konica Minolta team – from our local Polish contacts through to European and Tokyo headquarter teams – have provided fantastic support by helping us review and test various book covers so we could be sure we were making the right choice. It’s been a true partnership. Looking forward as part of our collaboration, we are delighted to be testing new substrates in Japan. Konica Minolta provides worldwide expertise.”

Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1’s UV inkjet technology, traditional handling and sheeting up to B2+ size, allows Totem to easily execute orders on various print media up to 0.6 mm, without special preparation. Another advantage involves easily incorporating larger sheets into the finishing processes already in place, as well as seamlessly joining workflows. The Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1 press at Totem – a company ranked top Polish printing house by publishers in the “Digital Printers” category in 2018 – is the second to be installed in Poland.

Tomasz Habierski, Industrial Product Manager at Konica Minolta Business Solutions Polska, said: “We introduced this digital colour press in response to the growing demand for fast turnaround short run book production. We have been working with Totem.com.pl for many years. The press is complementing other systems and supporting the broad mix of work the company manages on a daily basis. Full production capability was achieved in a short space of time and the machine is running over two working shifts, which is expected to increase to three.”

Mark Hinder, Head of Market Development, Konica Minolta Europe, who first met Micha? Rejnowski and his team May 2017, said: “They set us a tough challenge: ‘can KM-1 really replace offset production for high quality book covers and books?’ We succeeded through a number of factors. These included the unique capabilities of Dot Freeze technology. Colour gamut stability has been achieved with our ability to combine our inkjet heads, ink and Dot Freeze technology in a highly reliable and flexible way. A low total cost of ownership was another essential element in Totem’s decision to choose Konica Minolta over other suppliers.

“Pivotal also in the negotiations was taking the team from Totem over to PLS Print Logistic Services, our original beta site in Germany that has been using the AccurioJet KM-1 successfully for over two years. This was in addition to strict test conditions on various book covers at Totem that proved to them our inkjet system was the best on the market.

He added: “We’re proud and delighted to be welcoming Totem to the growing family of users, all benefiting from the AccurioJet KM-1, a world-class production system that we are confident will expand its business significantly.”