“In the past, the printing industry would see a major change only once every decade. Today, significant shifts occur every three years, with minor adjustments emerging annually. To keep up with these changes, the flexibility brought by digital printing systems will become increasingly critical.”
– Patrick Mak, Founder and General Manager, Wide Ocean Printing Co., Limited
Established in 1993, Wide Ocean Printing Co., Limited (“Wide Ocean”) primarily serves corporate clients and designers in Hong Kong and Macau to fulfil their demand for production of paper printed products. In recent years, the company has also been actively expanding into the Mainland China market.
Wide Ocean’s core services cover the packaging design and production of various paper boxes and special-material gift boxes. By utilizing pre & post-press finishing such as hot stamping, digital foil stamping by Scodix, silk-screen cold foiling, embossing and on-line cold foiling on diverse substrates, the company delivers high-quality printed products to customers.
In recent years, corporate demand for printing has become polarized. Some enterprises have reduced their print volumes, shifting from mass production to small-and-medium-run premium printing. Other businesses are expanding, even doubling their print orders. To capture these shifting market opportunities, printing companies must adopt compatible printing systems and technologies that offer customers diversified options, including varied pricing, finishing visual effects, and turnaround speeds. Providing a wider range of solutions enables the company to seize more business opportunities.
While Wide Ocean’s factory in Dongguan is equipped with an extensive array of offset printing facilities & systems, relying solely on offset printing fell short of meeting increasingly diverse customer needs. Recognizing the superior flexibility that digital printing systems offer, Wide Ocean decided to acquire the Revoria Press™ PC1120 digital press, which delivers distinct advantages across several areas:
Proofing: Proofing can be completed at a much lower cost. Producing samples in dark, medium, or light color variations simply requires digital adjustments via computer, significantly accelerating the process.
Flexibility: It supports variable data printing (VDP), offering a clear edge in customised printing, such as printing personalised names & titles for invitations, anti-fake codes and serial numbers for coupons.
Color Gamut: The application of speciality colors has matured significantly in recent years. By utilizing specialty colors like green, pink, gold, silver, white, and clear, it expands the color gamut to rival that of offset printing. Furthermore, it enables single-pass, multi-color printing, which is highly beneficial for packaging designs that requiring folding.
Volume and Cost Advantages: Offset printing requires extensive setup and high upfront costs, necessitating larger print runs to amortize expenditures. In contrast, digital printing incurs consistent toner and equipment depreciation costs regardless of quantity, resulting in nearly identical unit printing cost. Consequently, for print runs under 1,000 sheets, the total cost remains lower than that of offset printing.
Wide Ocean once took on a project whose budget was suddenly slashed by 40%, which initially posed a major challenge. However, by switching to the Revoria Press™ PC1120 digital printing system, Wide Ocean not only completed the project flawlessly but also achieved a higher profit margin than originally projected.
Beyond this single success, Revoria Press™ PC1120 digital press has enabled Wide Ocean to provide customers with a broader range of options. Customers may now choose between offset and digital printing, conventional CMYK four-colour printing or digital speciality colors and opt whether to incorporate variable data printing. This diversification in both cost and finished products gives customers more choices while opening up abundant new business avenues for Wide Ocean.