Riso (UK), the leading printer manufacturer, announces the House of Commons' Vote Office Print Services department has chosen Riso's HC5000, the world's fastest sheet-fed full colour A3 inkjet printer, following a very stringent selection process in which the machine scored very highly on cost effectiveness, high speed, reliability and productivity. The HC5000 has enabled the Vote Office Print Services department to significantly improve its ability to print a high volume of different types of colour documents and in the imminent future will also enable the department to expand the printing services it offers.

The department offers printing services to the House of Commons and the House of Lords and with the Riso HC5000, the department is able to meet this high volume printing demand, while sharply reducing its production costs by two-thirds (on a per page basis) compared to its previous production costs.

One of the ongoing requirements that the Print Services department is tasked with is printing customised one-colour letterheads for the Departments of the House. The HC5000 being an inkjet technology and using oil-based ink, allows the ink to dry very quickly and embeds it into the structure of the letterhead paper. This makes it possible for the letterheads to then subsequently be put through any type of printing machine including thermal printers and copiers. In fact, it is this fast drying feature of the HC5000 that enables the machine to print at the unprecedented speed of 105 pages per minute.

On the other hand, the HC5000 allows the production of a wide variety of documents and bulletins in full colour, making them more attractive and readable, and all this at an extremely attractive cost per print of only 2 pence. Richard Thompson, Managing Director, Riso (UK) comments: "The benefit is two-fold: the highly cost effective HC5000 allows print departments to save up to 75% of the cost per print compared to a traditional colour copier. This leads to cost savings of such a level that this investment has a payback time in many cases of less than 6 months.

"At the same time, thanks to the extremely low print cost, people can afford to produce attractive documents in full colour within their available budgets - an ideal solution for newsletters, training manuals, flyers and research reports, both for internal and external use.

"The HC5000 is a proven technology and we are seeing fantastic take-up of the product not only in the UK, but across Europe. It is a perfect solution for Inplant departments as it can enable these organisations to increase and diversify their portfolio very easily and cost-effectively, which for any service-oriented organisation is critical."

The HC5000 offers a print speed of up to 105 A4 pages per minute and a monthly duty cycle of up to 250,000 pages. With a cost per page that's equivalent to black and white, for the first time ever businesses are benefiting from fast and affordable colour printing for everyday communications.