SMARTECH installs first Agfa JETI Tauro H3300 for Dashing Group in NSW, Australia

Retail in-store and experiential specialist Dashing has purchased the first Agfa JETI Tauro H3300 in New South Wales recently installed by SMARTECH.

Dashing has purchased the first Agfa JETI Tauro H3300 in NSW recently installed by SMARTECH at its premises in Lane Cove. Dashing CEO Russell Kavnat received a call earlier this year from Agfa’s Phillip Burns that clinched the sale.

Dashing was looking to upgrade its equipment that coincidentally Burns had previously sold them nine years ago while he was working for another organisation.

“Phillip happened to call us at the right time,” said Kavnat.

“Dashing has been around for 34 years, and I have been in the business for 18.

“At that stage, Agfa was not on our radar, and we hadn’t looked at the range before that and did not know a lot about the products. We had been exploring the market for about 18 months and the other brands we had on the floor didn’t have anything in their product portfolio that suited our future needs.

“Our production manager Matt Boyden and our head of operations Shan Vandiveloo then ran a comprehensive analysis and looked seriously at two or three key options in terms of print quality, speed and efficiency as well as ink utilisation and based on this matrix – the Agfa machine was a clear winner,” Kavnat said.

According to Boyden, there were additional endorsements from local and overseas printers that were also important influencers for the final decision.

“Our visit to see the Agfa JETI Tauro 3300 at Melbourne-based Ancyn Screenprinters really helped get it across the line from our perspective – they were very welcoming and provided us with a great demonstration on the machine. We also spoke to a couple of overseas customers as well including production managers at Bernard Group in the United States that gave us very positive feedback,” Boyden said.

Kavnat said there was a very small window of opportunity available to install the machine due in between retail campaign seasons.

“We could see that we needed to make an installation mid-year in June during our calmer months, but we had to bring it forward as in May we had an issue with our existing equipment, and we were going to have to put a large amount of money in to keep it running. The team at SMARTECH was great as we went ahead with the installation earlier than expected as the machine was already in the country and ready to go. We worked around it and the guys from SMARTECH did a good job of getting it in,” Kavnat said.

According to Boyden, while the Agfa JETI Tauro can perform roll-to-roll work, this was not a key reason for purchase as there is roll-to-roll capability within existing machines already in the business.

“This machine will largely do sheet fed work – and largely synthetic jobs – such as Corflutes, PVCs, screenboards and paper-based media. In terms of criteria for purchasing, we wanted something that would fit and have scalable architecture in terms of automation and industry-leading quality at high speed and the ink consumption was a benefit as well.

“With the previous configuration, they would use a lot of ink through purging and it has been proven by Agfa that the Tauro has the lowest ink consumption on the market for similar presses – so we wanted to go from wasting a lot of ink in the bin to having something that was very economical but also for sustainability,” Boyden said.

“There is always a teething period when a new machine is installed, but the service we had both remotely and onsite from the Agfa-trained engineers employed by SMARTECH has been great. The machine is now up and running and we have seen immediate quality improvements as well as more throughput and we are looking forward to greater capacity in the future with lower operating costs and that is the reason why we have made this capital investment for the long term. It is hard not to replace a machine that has been running for almost 10 years and not see quality improvements, but we are quality obsessed – just like our customers – and we needed to get a machine that was going to deliver us with a much higher level of print quality.”

SMARTECH business development manager, Tim Hawes, was pleased to continue the long association with the Dashing business.

“The SMARTECH business relationship with Dashing dates back to the 1990s when the business was GBC, Neopost and then Quadient. There is a lot of equipment on these premises that SMARTECH have looked after and will continue to look after and support. We are excited to have the Agfa JETI Tauro 3300 now installed and we can continue working with innovators in the industry like Dashing and support them with the equipment and services they need,” Hawes said.

This article appeared in the August 2024 issue of ProPrint magazine and an online article at Sprinter.