Digital Lizard, a digital print facility owned by Creel Co. that operates a nearly 90,000-square-foot facility in Las Vegas, is installing six new HP Indigo 7900 Digital Presses — two each in its Southwest, mountain and East Coast locations.
The HP Indigo 7900 is an ultrahigh-quality liquid electrophotographic A3+ press that will give Digital Lizard customers impeccable image reproduction along with near-perfect match of any color in the Pantone spectrum.
The presses offer numerous specialty-ink effects and capabilities on synthetic, canvas, metalized, lenticular and other materials.
Digital Lizard President Bill Wieners said the $5.2 million investment, which includes upgrading all HP Indigo presses to Indigo 7900 specifications, will let the company stay up to date on the latest technology.
“It helps us stay ahead of the rest of the competition,” he said. “There are also some specific features this allows us to bring to customers. The one that I keep touting is that color management across all of our facilities will be instantaneous so we’ll be able to print the same file in all of our facilities.”
“We’ll be the only ones to do this immediately, more will come after, but we’ll be able to yield more per hour,” he said. “We’ll be able to do more and be able to do it more accurately and offer better quality for our customers.”
Wieners added clients such as Las Vegas’ Boyd Gaming Corp.-owned properties on both coasts, so being able to have something printed identically in a pinch for them is a “huge benefit” in the industry.
The HP Indigo 7900 was on display earlier this month at DSCOOP 2016 in San Antonio. The press is manufactured carbon neutral, with higher efficiencies and reduced production waste.
The investment also includes a Hunkeler Printer Online Paper Processing, replicating other equipment and allowing for full redundancies and backup across plants.
“Presses have become 30 to 40 percent easier to operate with this new release and technology, which allows us to have less labor while getting more out of our labor,” he said. “We’re able to hire easier and that’s a huge savings and benefit for our business manager.”
Digital Lizard operates plants in Hayden, Idaho, and Las Vegas along with a sister company in Mahwah, New Jersey.
