Pushing the boundaries of technology

Can you give me insight into your latest print and finishing technology, and how it can help UK sign-makers diversify into new markets?

Our Fusion 4 machine continues to be a best seller to small and medium sized companies. The Fusion 4 answers a specific need in the market at the moment with the ability to print on up to 400gsm media, which is one of the highest in the market. It is an ideal machine for items such as business cards, point-of-sale signage, and speciality applications.

The Fusion 5 has all the advantages of the 4, but also has a fifth colour of white or clear. This opens up all kinds of other markets to the user including the ability to print onto dark coloured media and envelopes as well as textile transfers for dark garments. Our latest finishing product is a market changer. It is an automatic air-feed creasing/perforating/slitting system. It incorporates the capability of up to 32 creases/perforations per sheet as well as linear slitting/creasing perforating. In fact, as well as creasing it could be used to perforate a whole sheet of tickets. Our unit retails at under half the price of other manufacturers competitive products.

What do you feel are some of the most important challenges facing your customers, and how are you responding to them?

In the past six months we have noticed a continuing trend of customers that have had much larger, faster, and more powerful wide-format and small-format machines that have reached the extent of their capacity as the company has grown. At this point they have analysed their usage of these machines and the cost of replacement for a more productive system and realised that to get a good return they would have to increase the volume that they put through their machine massively.

In an uncertain world where currency values are fluctuating and demand is unpredictable, this is not an easy decision to make and so many are opting to go for a smaller system such as our Fusion 4 or Production Printing System that can help them diversify their sign-making business into new areas such as garment printing, commercial print items, and also promotional product printing.

This gives them a much lower breakeven point and takes away the pressure of having massive finance agreements and minimum print quantities, but still gives them the ability to offer fast turnaround digital printing to their clients. Although the smaller units can be a little more expensive to run, the total cost of ownership can be much less to all but the busiest of printing companies, as it is only companies with significant volume that really benefit by spending their money on larger, much more expensive machines.

X-Press On Demand is one of the UK’s few printer manufacturing brands, what is your ethos that has underpinned your success?

Apart from our experience and knowledge of the industry, in our experience we have found that practical application of technology is our key to success. It is relatively easy to add bells and whistles to products, but the offering needs to have a purpose, if it does not, it is lost on the prospective customer.



Our solutions include niche products that have a specific application as well as labour saving software and finishing products to improve and streamline production. Every product we sell has a clear marketplace and an application.

Our ethos being that it has to make the end users life easier or save them money. We work with print engine manufacturers and push the boundaries of technology in order to achieve what companies want and need to give themselves a competitive advantage. So, whether it be a fast production printing system or an electric corner cutter we aim to provide a market leading innovative solution that will save our customers time and money.


You exhibited at The Print Show in 2016, this year co-located with SignLink Live, what was your most successful system at the show and why?

The Print Show 2016 was successful for us again. We found a lot more interest was generated in our range of finishing products as well as the five-colour machines, which now seem to have caught people’s imagination. As well as this we were showcasing our new Production Printing System which really struck a chord, by offering a true production press at a price that is affordable even for the smaller company. With a speed of 65ppm and the ability to print on some litho stocks as well as textured media and card, this machine is ideal for the company that needs the highest quality at the lowest run costs combined with the flexibility of media that a jobbing firm requires. We have sold a number of these during and since The Print Show, and we hope that we can help many more companies see the benefits of this amazing machine.

What is on the horizon for you in terms of new technology for your customers?

We are expecting to see our brand new foiling system by the end of 2016. This will give users a never before seen price point in foiling technology. Not only this but the machine will have many more applications—watch this space.



Our brand new X-Press On Demand Job Management System can also be added to any of our products, this gives our customers the ability to produce quotations, invoices, and accurate costings of their jobs with a fully customisable pricing structure for both the printing and finishing. We have also been focused on automating as much as we can from imposition/step and repeat within our very useful workflow, all the way to automatic creasing and slitting. While doing this, we are always mindful of keeping the costs as low as possible and providing true value for money.

If you could pick one ‘business in a box’ for our readers, what would it be?

For the readers who are looking at a solution to take them into the world of digital printing for the first time, my pick would be our £39 a week solution which encompasses the complete workflow from imposition and colour management and printing, to cutting the finished job. We have sold a lot of these solutions over the past year or so all over the UK and Ireland with great success. They can also add in elements like a heat press and a package that will allow them to do garment printing.




For those that are looking to take their digital business to the next level, our new production package incorporates everything from imposition, high speed printing, colour calibration/management, automated creasing, cutting, laminating, and has options to include even more. At just £169 a week, we really are raising the bar on value and productivity in the digital printing market and this solution is currently providing an unsurpassed level of interest.



Key stats

• 9 members of staff
• Founded in 1992
• X-Press started in 1995
• Fastest printer speed of 90ppm

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