A family-owned Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Grace Printing has been serving Chicago and its suburbs since 1992. With more than 250 years of combined production management and printing industry experience among its staff, Grace Printing is a top choice in the area for applications such as books, brochures, banners, business cards, catalogs, direct mail, specialty finishes and die-cut products.
Konica Minolta’s AccurioJet KM-1 LED UV Ink Jet Press is the latest addition to Grace Printing’s new, 50,000 square-foot facility. With the expanded space and installation of the KM-1 Press, Grace Printing will be able to offer a much wider variety of services than ever before, including digital marketing solutions, printing, mailing, warehousing, promotional products and fulfillment. Additionally, many projects Grace Printing was outsourcing — floor graphics, vinyl substrates and large scale variable runs — can now be run in-house.
“Grace Printing has built its reputation based on family values and by keeping promises. We put our clients first, and help them get their message out through multiple channels,” says Titus Eapen, CEO, Grace Printing. “The AccurioJet KM-1 ensures we can fulfill all these objectives — and even better, with quicker turnaround and lower cost — while also being able to offer higher quality digitally printed products.”
Eapen further reports the AccurioJet KM-1 inkjet technology provides prints that are ‘as good or even better’ than traditional offset printing. His teams have found the LED UV inks are extremely effective on various substrates that are difficult with traditional offset, and durable in the mail stream. By using the KM-1 Press, Grace Printing has overcome challenges including attaining color consistency and printing short-run products on thicker substrates. Immediately following press installation, Grace Printing saw major improvements in efficiency with the ability to go from various substrates with minimal make-ready time and makeready waste.
“We are proud to partner with Grace Printing who serves a wide variety of clients, from fortune 500 companies to small retail stores,” says Bill Troxil, corporate senior VP, Industrial and Production Print, Konica Minolta. “Grace is one of the first commercial printers in the Chicago area to embrace this technology enabling them to cater to so many businesses with the widest variety of applications from one press.”