For more than 41 years, C&D Printing has been providing outstanding customer service and quality with a commitment to the environment. With a primary focus on understanding and meeting the individual needs of its customers, C&D Printing offers a full range of commercial printing, finishing, and fulfillment services. The company is headquartered in St. Petersburg, Fla., and has won a number of local and national awards for its work.
Looking to expand its innovative capabilities, C&D Printing decided it was time to make an upgrade in its two Kodak NEXPRESS presses. The company replaced an older Kodak NEXPRESS digital production color press model with a new Kodak NEXPRESS SX2700 digital production color press that includes the long-sheet option and Kodak Fifth Imaging Unit Solutions, enabling features such as gold ink, dimensional printing, and more. A Kodak NEXPRESS 2500S press purchased a few years ago rounds out the digital printing portfolio in the company’s production area. Both presses are fully utilized throughout each shift.
“It’s all about being able to offer something that your competitors can’t, and for us the NEXPRESS Presses provide that advantage,” says Bill Serata, president of C&D Printing. “When we show clients samples of the Gold or Dimensional work, they immediately see the opportunity to stand out. It’s definitely a wow factor, but it’s ideal for improving visibility and response. That’s ultimately what matters in any marketing or promotional campaign.”
This latest investment is indicative of the passion that C&D Printing has for its clients, many of whom have been loyal customers for more than 30 years. Serata is quick to note that he considers his clients his biggest assets, and he is always thinking about how to raise the bar on the services he provides while maintaining a focus on customer service, quality, and offering competitive pricing.
“The NEXPRESS presses are a big part of our growth over the past few years,” he adds. “Even as the industry slowed overall, we continued to grow and our volumes increased. Our digital printing capabilities supplement the offset work we are doing, and while some of our existing offset clients added digital work to their operations, we also saw a number of new clients as a result of what we can now offer. The short-run, high-quality work we produce with the NEXPRESS presses sets us apart in our market and opens a lot of doors for us.”
The NEXPRESS SX2700 press boasts print speeds up to 91 ppm, and like all NEXPRESS presses, features print genius technology, a suite of quality-control tools and options that help users manage and maintain peak quality throughout the production run. The press delivers vibrant colors and consistent spot color matching, smooth flat fields and gradients, denser blacks that maintain superb detail and highlights, and a unique ability to match the ink gloss level to the substrate being printed. Proven compatibility with more than 800 substrates and a scalable, upgradeable architecture make the Kodak NEXPRESS SX platform a smart investment for long-term productivity.
“One of the really nice things about the NEXPRESS Platform is the ability to upgrade and add features as your business grows,” says Gregory Gresock, Kodak’s regional business manager and vice president of electrophotographic printing solutions, U.S. and Canada. “C&D Printing is a perfect example of a company that makes investments with an eye to the future, and as a result is well positioned for the years ahead. The NEXPRESS platform provides versatility, photographic image quality, and benchmark productivity for high-value applications, while mixing easily into a full-service printing environment. The ability to seamlessly move work between offset and digital is a huge advantage.”
Thanks to its environmental practices, which include an extensive recycling program, the use of vegetable-based inks, and ongoing investment in equipment like NEXPRESS that minimizes environmental footprint, C&D Printing has earned a number of green certifications. The company prides itself on its ability to maintain a leadership in sustainability while delivering outstanding print quality that drives results.
“We’ve already done a few unique projects with clients—such as a calendar with Dimensional printing at a 30-inch length, and a quick turnaround realty book finished in a 12-by-2-inch size with very high-quality images,” says Serata. “We have also done a few Gold and metallic projects that looked fantastic. Ultimately, this new press represents our commitment to stay on the leading edge and extend our capabilities while keeping the work in-house to ensure the highest level of quality and service.”
Kodak
