Konica Minolta C8000

Hitesh Patel of KCL Imaging, says, that this true value-added differentiator, has allowed his company to meet the most diverse customer requirements

01 Mar 2014 | By Noel D'Cunha

Describe your company.
Established in 2002, KCL Imaging is a digital printing and colour lab business with facilities in Surat, Ahmedabad and Rajkot, catering to over 250 clients from textile and the graphic arts industry. We have installed 12 C8000, the latest one a month ago.
 
What does the machine do?
The KM C8000 is used for digital printing of catalogues mainly for the textile industry. 
 
Why did you make the purchase?
The C8000 is a colour digital press, which delivers high-quality short-run jobs. We liked the quality of the machine, when we saw it first and since then have installed a raft of these machines for our operations. 
 
Did you look at any other similar machines?
We had Ricoh machines earlier but after seeing the print quality of the C8000, we decided to switch to Konica Minolta.
 
Why did you make the purchase? 
We already had the C8000 running at our centres, and hence when the need to boost our capacity arose, we decided to go with it by replacing the existing Ricoh machines.
 
What features do you particularly like?
The skew detection system that controls the skew amount after the leading edge of the paper has been fed. Since most of our jobs are the booklets, double-sided printing delivers perfect registration with almost no shift on the spread layouts. Over all, as a true value-add differentiator, the C8000 has helped us meet most diverse customer requirements.
 
What’s the quality like?
Excellent. It has helped us improve customer satisfaction through digital image quality, which is on par with offset printing. 
 
Is there anything that you dislike?
It prints at a speed of up to 80 A4 pages per minute. The speed could have been a little bit higher.
 
Is there anything that you wish it had that it doesn’t?
No, other than speed everything is perfect.
 
How much time or money has it saved?
I don’t know about saving, but yes, our volume has almost doubled. 
 
Has it won you any new work?
Yes. Earlier we were doing only single-side prints but after installing C8000 we are perfect-printing our catalogues.
 
Would you say that it offers value for money?
For our business, it’s the best in class digital printer in terms of price and quality.
 
Were there any difficulties experienced during the installation or after?
Not really. Everything was smooth.
 
What about the pre and after-sale service? 
Excellent. This is the one reason why we bought the C8000 from Monotech. 
 
Who do you think the machine is right for?
Any one who is looking for quality and value for money in digital printing.
 
Under what circumstances would you buy another?
Whenever there is a need to up our capacity, we would consider picking up another C8000.
 
Conclusion
User’s verdict
Speed 4/5
Quality 5/5 
Reliability 5/5
Value for money 5/5
Supplier’s Response
Ajeeth Pareek, DGM for sales at Monotech Systems, says, “KCL Imaging has emerged as a market leader in terms of digital print volume in Gujarat in a short span of 12 years. Hiteshbhai has meticulously planned and excellently executed his business plan. We first installed the C8000 in 2013 and since then the number stands at 12, and there’s a possibility of that number going up. KCL is the biggest Konica Minolta customer in the country, both in terms of number of machines installed and monthly print volume in the commercial print market.”
 
Contact Monotech Systems
               Ajeet Pareek
              +91 9212764430
              ajeet@monotech.in