Dina Color Lab sets up six digital commercial printing shops in Tamil Nadu

“We have been considering the possibility for almost six years but felt the time was ripe for us to now make the jump and take our business goals forward,” said M Dinakaran, managing director of Dina group of companies.

The company founded in 1991 as a photo and colour lab deploys six HP Indigo presses, a Kodak Nexpress, a number of Canon presses and several other small and large format inkjet presses for this purpose and have 22 photo lab locations across Tamil Nadu with several pioneering efforts in introducing new technology.

“We have started commercial units in Chennai, Trichy, Madurai, Pondicherry, Salem and Sivakasi so far and are intent on adding at least 10 more locations in other towns and cities in Tamil Nadu in the coming months,” explained Dinakaran.

“We are seeing month on month increase in demand and production at our units which we find very encouraging,” he added.

The company consumes a cumulative of almost two and a half lakh sheets of paper per month across locations.

Dinakaran credits their unique pricing strategy for the growing success. He said “We are targeting the offset and the wedding card market apart from the traditional digital print job market and are working on ‘print copy’ basis of pricing and making it easier for our customers.”

“For example with our unique plan we would offer 300 visiting cards at just Rs 99,” elaborated Dinakaran.

The company has installed a total of six Konica Minolta Bizhub 1085 production presses in all these locations together. The Bizhub Press C1085 can print up to 85 pages per minute (ppm) respectively, without compromising on the quality, delivering reliably accurate registration and colour consistency. In addition, flexible substrate handling and inline finishing options provide professional looking output while enabling more effective workflow management.

“We have always believed in investing in the best of technology for our photo printing operations. We were the first to install an Oce Arizona printer which we use to print on glass and similar rigid substrates. We were also the first in the country to get a MGI Jetvarnish 3DS. In fact, we have recently added our second Jetvarnish at Srirangam, Trichy. They have given us an added edge in providing a special finishing to wedding cards, book wrappers, menu and even visiting cards. We would be implementing the same philosophy of innovation in our commercial divisions too,” he added.

With single-pass printing, the Jetvarnish 3DS is a UV spot varnish device and spot foiling device. The digitisation of spot UV finishing allows printers to take a few sheets from each job and spot UV coat or spot foil it so customers can see the effect their jobs could have.
The company is also expected to add two more Jetvarnish 3DS in their Madurai and Coimbatore units by the end of the year.

“We also have seven Duplo machines - the highest number in India and are also considering adding a few more in the future,” concluded Dinakaran.