ANRO Improves its Edge with Versatile Digital Production

At ANRO, innovation is nothing new. From its origins in 1953 providing duplicating and secretarial services, today the suburban Philadelphia company is an industry-leading commercial print, direct mail and digital service provider with an extensive fleet of conventional and digital presses, including three HP (Booth 1202) Indigo Digital Presses, an HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press and an HP T300 Color Inkjet Web Press. ANRO’s dynamic digital capabilities attract lucrative new business and put it at the forefront of the industry.

ANRO has a customer base comprised of Fortune 500 companies including banks, utilities, cable companies, major retailers and brands from New England to Atlanta, along with several national customers. In addition to providing print and mail services, ANRO also develops branded web-to-print solutions for its customers. Currently, over 30 of these programs feed work into its digital presses. Since installing its first Indigo TurboStream press in 1997, ANRO has been a proponent of liquid ink digital printing. By 2014, the company had experience with several generations of HP Indigo presses, and its fleet of HP Indigo 7000 Digital Presses was six years old.

“Through our regular contact with HP, we learned about the new features on the HP Indigo 7800 Digital Press and felt the time was right to make the investment. There were a lot of choices to make when buying the presses,” says Paul DeSantis, Director of Information Technology. “We wanted to take advantage of the new HP technologies, but not invest in features our customers wouldn’t want to use.” ANRO chose the full 7-color capability and the One Shot process options for all three presses. “We installed the heavy substrate kit on two of the presses; the white ink option on two; and the special effects kit for raised print and textures on one of the presses,” DeSantis explains. “These features gave us a host of new product capabilities to offer customers.” ANRO also installed a digital cutting and creasing machine from HP finishing partner Highcon for card, folder and folding carton production. “We built our ROI business case for the HP Indigo 7800 Digital Presses on the value-adding print features and anticipated savings on imaging oil. An investment in three new presses is a significant commitment for a company. Our long-standing relationship with HP across a variety of printers and presses provided us with the assurance we needed to proceed with confidence,” says DeSantis.

“Shortly after installing our HP Indigo 7800 Digital Presses, we had the opportunity to print a POS display job on Teslin for a major retail brand,” DeSantis explains. “The original order was for 5,000, but the customer was so impressed by the rich color, deep black and opaque white that he increased the order to 10,000 before deciding to migrate the entire project to a digital printing platform and have ANRO print all 50,000 pieces.” DeSantis credits this ten-fold increase in the job to the One Shot printing technology. “For jobs requiring super-critical registration, it’s a real differentiator,” he says. “Even though it was more expensive than printing conventionally, the customer thought the impact on the brand’s image was worth it.” ANRO has also seen a big impact on its environmental footprint as a result of the new presses. “We used to get imaging oil by the pallet-load,” says DeSantis. “The new presses generate imaging oil through a sophisticated recycling system so we have enough to supply our HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press. We save on shipping, space and disposal, too. It’s an amazing change. Greater uptime and other efficiencies means that we are seeing an increase in productivity of 12 to 16 percent on each press,” DeSantis concludes.