Schoolpix has tripled its production speed since installing the Indigo on 25 October, giving it a lot of spare capacity to fill, said owner Tony Wouters.

The Melbourne-based firm had previously relied on two Noritsu wet labs, which had to work hard to get through the annual production load of 700,000 school photos, he told ProPrint.

However, he said the Indigo would handle that workload “no dramas at all”, so Schoolpix would start looking for trade printing and packaging work to fill the machine.

The diversification push will start in 2013 once the teething problems have been resolved and the operators have familiarised themselves with the device, he said.

[Related: CMYKhub expands into digital with Indigo 5600]

“It’s challenging for us and exciting that we can see a brighter future learning to diversify and looking for other markets that will continue to keep my staff employed for the next 20 years.”

Wouters said he opted for the Indigo because he was impressed by its environmental credentials, speed and quality.

“It’s very difficult to see the difference in quality between the Indigo and a traditional photographic wet lab,” he said.

“If we can get the cost of producing the prints down further, it goes a long way to paying the printer off. Flexibility was also important – it can print on lots of other substrates and that will give us the flexibility to potentially enter new markets.”

The Indigo 5600, which was launched at Drupa, can print at up to 68 pages per minute in four-colour mode or up to 90ppm in ‘Enhanced Productivity Mode’, using three colours instead of full CMYK.

[Related: Customers will pay more for high-end photobooks]

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