FREMONT, California – February 23, 2015 – EFI™ (Nasdaq: EFII) today announced that Paratore Signs has become one of the country’s first businesses to install the new, hybrid roll/flatbed EFI VUTEk® H2000 Pro printer with UltraDrop™ Technology. The Syracuse, N.Y.-based company purchased the printer to augment its digital production of signs and display graphics.
The installation – which also included the new version 6 of EFI Fiery® XF Production software – adds significant throughput capacity, building on the digital printing success Paratore Signs has had with an older EFI VUTEk PressVu printer. “We are pleased to continue our relationship with EFI,” said John Paratore, the company’s president. “Our older flatbed printer delivered four 4×8-foot boards per hour and now we are producing 14. That’s a huge step forward for our business.
“Not only are we more than tripling our throughput with the new VUTEk printer,” Paratore added, “we are also able to deliver significantly improved quality with its 1,000-dpi resolution and 7-picoliter UltraDrop Technology. The printer has already enabled us to secure new retail and trade customers and we see more growth in our future.”
Founded 60 years ago by sign painter Frank Paratore – John Paratore’s father – the family-owned company has gone through many changes over the years, morphing from sign painting to screen printing, vinyl graphics, digital finishing and promotional products. This latest acquisition will take the company’s sign and display graphics platform to the next level.
VUTEk quality and versatility create the advantage in a competitive market
Paratore Signs’ new VUTEk printer is a 2-meter wide, six-color, UV inkjet device featuring EFI’s UltraDrop variable-droplet grayscale technology. Its production-level speeds and high-end imaging make it ideal for a wide variety of mid-volume sign and display graphics work. While the printer’s 1,000-dots per inch(dpi) imaging capability produces what John Paratore describes as “stunning quality,” he said even the printer’s 600-dpi setting outperforms what the company was able to output in the past, with faster throughput and less ink consumption.
Launched at the 2014 SGIA Expo, the new printer delivers exceptional quality, including legible 4-point type and vibrant color, at an entry-level price point for wide-format production output. It’s affordable, extensible base platform – with white ink, roll-to-roll media handling and, soon, clear varnish available as add-on options – positions companies like Paratore Signs to stay a step ahead of their clients’ future needs.
Prep, print and cut with automated efficiency
John Paratore chose to fully load his new VUTEk printer with white ink and roll-to-roll media handling. And, he moved to maximize the quality and efficiency of his wide-format imaging workflow by adding EFI Fiery XF software to drive the new printer.
Paratore Signs’ Fiery XF software includes optional support for digital cutters and new tiling features – tools that have helped the company reduce wasted media while printing more jobs per shift. Using this new technology to add vision marks to prints in the job-prep process “makes it easy and productive for us to gang posters and other smaller items in a single job for automated processing with our digital cutting table,” according to John Paratore.
Paratore added that the white ink option he purchased with his new printer “opens the door to higher-end production on transparent and dark substrates that we were unable to achieve before. And the one-pass, three-layer capability with white ink creates signs with unbelievable quality whether they areviewed in daylight or backlit.”
“It is exciting to see multi-generation, family-owned companies like Paratore Signs aggressively staying ahead of market trends,” said Frank Mallozzi, EFI’s senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. “Paratore Signs’ new printer provides more flexibility in high-end inkjet printing with a lower total cost of ownership. We look forward to continuing our longstanding partnership with John Paratore and his team as they continue to grow their business.”
For more information about EFI VUTEk printers, visit www.efi.com or contact 800-875-7117.
About EFI
EFI™ (www.efi.com) is a worldwide provider of products, technology and services leading the transformation of analog to digital imaging. Based in Silicon Valley, with offices around the globe, the company’s powerful integrated product portfolio includes digital front-end servers; superwide, wide- format, label and ceramic inkjet presses and inks; production workflow, web to print, and business automation software; and office, enterprise and mobile cloud solutions. These products allow users to produce, communicate and share information in an easy and effective way, and enable businesses to increase their profits, productivity, and efficiency.
