Over the years, RPI Europe has established itself as a leading global provider of personalised print solutions for B2C and B2B brands. Based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, the company is part of RPI Print, with four printing locations worldwide and more than 500 employees.
RPI prints and ships more than 242 million unique items annually, focusing on high-volume personalised orders, such as photobooks of treasured memories and business collateral, including posters, flyers and business cards.
RPI Europe and Canon partner to master on-demand photobook production at scale
Discover how RPI Europe, a leading global provider of personalised photobooks and business collateral, enhanced its production capabilities with Canon’s innovative sheetfed inkjet technology, achieving superior reliability, productivity, and consistent quality.
Watch: RPI Europe and Canon case study
Hanneke Boon, Director Operations, and Paul Adriaans, General Manager, RPI Europe, explain how Canon technology enhances the business’ flexibility and helps it operate seamlessly as a highly productive ‘flow’ company.
RPI Europe’s key objectives for the partnership
Objective #1: Master seasonal peaks with scalable solutions
As a highly seasonal business with significant peaks around holidays and promotional periods, RPI Europe needed a solution enabling it to rapidly scale production up and down with consistent quality.
Labour market constraints added to the challenge, as finding operators with technical experience during peak periods was increasingly difficult.
Objective #2: Achieve long-term, sustainable success
With sustainability increasingly important to both RPI Europe and its customers, the company sought to reduce its environmental impact without affecting production efficiency.
This goal meant investing in a press with a low energy consumption per image and non-hazardous, water-based polymer pigment inks that offer high deinkability.
Objective #3: Ensure reliable operation with minimal intervention
A major challenge for RPI Europe was the need for continuous, reliable operation without constant operator intervention.
New technology with a high degree of automation can deliver low maintenance requirements, with best-in-class presses offering unparalleled sheetfed productivity with an uptime of over 90%.
Why Canon
The relationship between RPI Europe and Canon spans more than 25 years, beginning when RPI Europe (then operating as Paro Printing) first invested in Canon technology.
Based on this longstanding relationship and positive experiences with Canon equipment, including the sheetfed, toner-based, monochrome varioPRINT 6000 series, as well as the Colorado large format printer, RPI Europe assessed Canon’s latest generation of sheetfed inkjet technology.
After extensive testing and analysis, RPI Europe invested in the varioPRINT iX3200 press, first as a complementary technology, and later as a replacement.
We invested in the Canon varioPRINT iX3200 to address the challenges of the labour market. As our industry is peak-driven, we need to scale our workforce, but operators with technical experience are scarce, so a device that is low touch – we call it a ‘green button’ machine – and easy to learn, provides RPI with significant benefits. The system also has additional advantages: it’s fast, delivers the consistent quality our customers demand and requires minimal maintenance. All these features make it an excellent fit for our needs.”
Matching flow technology to flow production
RPI Europe’s investment in the Canon varioPRINT iX3200 has transformed the company’s production workflow, especially in its core photobook business. The press uses iQuariusiX technology to provide exceptional media flexibility and produces offset-like print quality at 1200 x 1200 dpi, for photobooks with rich, intense colours and excellent detail reproduction.
The varioPRINT iX3200 seamlessly integrated into RPI Europe’s production workflow, allowing for flexible planning and rapid responsiveness to fluctuating demand.
As a true ‘green button machine’, the sheetfed inkjet press runs continuously with minimal operator intervention, enabling RPI Europe to produce one unique photobook after another with consistent, high quality. This reliability has allowed RPI Europe to schedule work more efficiently, especially during peak production periods.
The varioPRINT iX3200 is supplemented by a Canon Colorado 1.6m roll-to-roll, wide format printer, which is used for posters and other larger format applications.
We like to position ourselves as a ‘flow’ company. Yes, we’re a printing company – but making a single book isn’t the challenge. Making one every day, every hour, every 30 seconds – that’s what sets us apart. And that’s only possible when you see the entire factory as one continuous flow.”
Benefits of partnering with Canon
RPI Europe and Canon’s partnership has led to several benefits for RPI Europe’s business.
Accelerating production and simplifying the workflow
Canon’s technology has significantly reduced production times and manual touchpoints, enabling faster delivery while ensuring that print quality remains consistently high.
Thanks to the productivity of the varioPRINT iX3200, RPI has consolidated the work of multiple existing presses onto a single Canon press, simplifying the workflow.
Quality and consistency without compromise
The varioPRINT iX3200 produces exceptional resolution and colour accuracy both on coated and uncoated papers, ensuring every photobook captures customers’ memories exactly as they expect.
This consistent print quality has strengthened RPI Europe’s reputation for premium photobooks.
New levels of reliability and flexibility
The varioPRINT iX3200 has proven to be exceptionally reliable; what RPI calls a true ‘green button machine’ that runs without constant monitoring or maintenance.
This reliability, combined with the easy operation, has given RPI Europe the flexibility during peak periods to quickly train new operators without extensive technical experience.
Improved sustainability
With high deinkability, the water-based inks of the varioPRINT iX3200, along with format flexibility and reduced paper waste, have helped RPI Europe strengthen its sustainability credentials while reducing waste.
By replacing several previous digital devices with one varioPRINT iX3200, RPI has lowered energy usage per page per production job.
Business growth facilitated by technology
The collaboration with Canon and its inkjet technologies has positioned RPI Europe for continued innovation and growth, ensuring they stay at the forefront of advances in printing technology.
“In the case of the iX3200, as its development was very focused on productivity, quality and uptime, that’s been really helpful for a flow company, such as ours.”
– Paul Adriaans, General Manager, RPI Europe
RPI is known for high-quality standards. And we would never compromise on that, which is the same for the Canon varioPRINT iX3200, so we’ve been able to maintain those standards at the same level.”
Related solutions
Learn more about Canon’s technology.
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varioPRINT iX3200
Discover the proven, market-leading sheetfed inkjet press and experience more profit and more business. -
Colorado M-series
A fully modular UVgel roll-to-roll printer for large format graphics. Configure the system to your needs, and upgrade later as your business grows. There are many opportunities to explore, including mixed gloss/matte printing and white ink. -
PRISMA Tools
Providing the data you need to maximise the performance of your print devices, including monitoring, analysis and cost allocation. -
PRISMAproduction
Streamline workflows and accelerate production efficiency with the high-performance workflow and output management platform PRISMAproduction.
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