In October 2003 in the town of Baillet en France, not far from Charles-De-Gaulle Airport in Paris, Daniel Bourgeoisat started work on implementing his concept for making innovative complete solutions available to all customers. With over 40 years of experience in the printing industry he set up the LARALEX printshop. Four years later it is apparent that constant investment and product and marketing innovations have turned the concept into a success. With 12 employees he generates annual sales of approx.1.5 million Euro. His wife, daughter and son-in-law also work in the LARALEX printshop, helping with all the work processes involved such as UV offset printing, punching, cutting, laminating and binding, etc. This small, high-quality firm therefore offers not only a full service but short turnaround times and custom-tailored solutions at the same time. This is a major advantage that Mr Bourgeoist exploits to the full to stand out from the competition.

He discovered a new niche market in the printing of plastics (such as PVC, PC, PS, ABS, PET, etc.) and invested in a GENIUS 52UV in November 2006. This waterless UV offset sheetfed press is particularly suitable for the printing of substrates such as PVC, polypropylene and diverse plastics, and of course for paper. It is a printing press which can be described as a five-colour press with a keyless inking unit, with the fifth printing unit also allowing the use of special inks, among other advantages. A separate coating unit provides the finish for each print and brings out the brilliance of the colours to even greater effect while providing lasting surface protection with absolute rub-resistance. In order to reduce processing times to a minimum and ensure immediate readiness for further processing, the GENIUS 52 UV also has several dryer units both after the printing unit and after the coating unit.

LARALEX’s main customers are advertising agencies and other firms with a wide diversity of special requirements and expectations of extremely short delivery times. Print runs range from minimal runs to 20,000 sheets. These kinds of printing jobs used to be carried out on a range of different conventional offset printing presses. On the basis of his decades of experience and an analysis of the printing press market, the print specialist was convinced of the unique qualities of the GENIUS 52UV after just a few test prints. Thanks to its consistent quality and quick job changeovers with minimal proof waste the GENIUS 52UV guarantees effective productivity in production. “The keyless inking units have no distributor rollers and no dampening units. That saves us up to 70% of the problems associated with normal offset printing and also saves time on cleaning at the end of the day. The UV offset technology in the GENIUS 52UV offers needle-sharp, consistent quality, with no visible inking fluctuations even with extremely different ink patches next to one another. Waterless UV offset technology is the optimum solution for producing this “ghosting effect”. It enables perfect printing results to be achieved even on paper with a weight of just 70 g/m²,” explains Daniel Bourgeoisat enthusiastically.

Company owner Daniel Bourgeoisat responds to enquiries received by the LARALEX printshop. In his hand he holds a ruler printed on lenticular film PVC: “Agencies come to us because they know that we can also print small print runs and formats. About 3 or 4 months ago we received the first enquiry for lenticular film printing. Everyone remembers the old “flip-flop images” and, thanks to the GENIUS 52UV, we can now offer this re-emerging trend to all our customers. It is lovely to see the shine in children’s eyes as they joyfully make a scoop of ice-cream laugh or jump up and down by moving it back and forth.” The GENIUS 52UV not only enables “flip-flop images” to be printed, where switching between 2 or more images is used to suggest movement, but also images with 3-D effects which make use of zoom effects to trick the human eye. By adding additional dimensions, lenticular film printing brings three-dimensional depth and movement to standard print products.

With the GENIUS 52UV, KBA-Metronic offers a high-performance, flexible and efficient printing press and is always there to help its customers with advice and assistance.

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