Graz Repro Centre choses SureColor

With around 450 members, the Austrian Armed Forces Command headquarters, with offices in Graz and Salzburg, runs two repro centres, that provide print services to all organisations and departments within the area.

These centres are equipped with the latest digital technologies. The IT equipment and the machinery must be able to meet extremely high standards in terms of versatility, quality and cost. Office Director Gerald Pojmann, advisor for copying and printing, visualisation and military topography for the Austrian Federal Ministry for National Defence and Sport, explains: "In order to be able to fulfil our many tasks in the repro centres quickly, cost-effectively and with high quality, we create extensive requirement profiles for replacement or new procurement, that new machines must fulfil. As part of the process, we carry out extensive research on the tenders and we then select the best equipment. Particular importance is attached to the costs that the solution incurs throughout its entire service life.”

With its SureColor SC-S60600, the repro centre in Graz alone prints around 3,500 m² of material per year, of which about 20 per cent is on film, 40 per cent on canvas and 40 per cent on blue back material, an inexpensive medium, suitable for almost all purposes. And for large events, people often seek the print expertise of the print services provider. The Graz repro centre produced placards and a variety of other printed materials for the AirPower 2016 air show. “Particularly when it comes to events like the air show, when a large amount of different prints must be delivered in a short space of time, reliable production machinery is essential,” explains Deputy Lieutenant Günter Rabel, head of the repro centre in Graz, “and this is where the Epson printer puts on a good show. The machine is reliable, easy to operate and we are also satisfied with the quality – so we are able to meet tight deadlines.”

The repro centres have proven to be a great success for the Austrian Armed Forces. The number of orders and production volumes have been steadily increasing for years and they have even recently increased the number of staff with apprentices. Consequently, they can now also offer some support for graphic design work too. As Deputy Lieutenant Rabel explains: “In print production, not only does the quality play a role, but adherence to specified corporate identities is also important. And because many organisations or departments would like to access our services more and more, it makes sense to also take over part of the design – making it easier for customers and ensuring both a consistently high quality and a consistent image.”

As well as pure print services, the repro centre also provides its customers with data services. For this, the centre uses a Discproducer PP-100, on which educational and training material can be digitised. The PP-100 ensures high-quality printing of CDs, so that materials remain usable, even after a long time.

With addition of the Discproducer, the repro centre now has an easy, inexpensive end-to-end solution for reproducing, printing and distributing data in hard or soft copy.