From Dot Matrix to Epson AM-C4000: How Levick's Quietly Got Their Print Right

We don't always write about jobs, but this one's worth talking about. Levick's, a Kent business, came to us earlier this year with a print setup that had grown organically over the years. You know how it goes. One machine gets added, then another, then someone buys a cheap desktop job for the back office, and before long you've got eight devices from five different manufacturers and a consumables bill that nobody can quite explain.

The Dot Matrix

There was a dot matrix printer in the mix. Still working, to be fair. But loud, slow, and running on ribbons that were getting harder to source. It was one of those machines that nobody switches off because it's technically not broken and nobody's entirely sure what it's used for. We've seen this more times than we can count.

The rest of the fleet was a spread of small laser desktop printers. Different brands, different toner types, different paper trays. Eight machines in total. Some worked fine, some had paper jams that staff had learned to live with, and collectively they were costing more than they should in toner, electricity and lost time.

Why Sustainability Was the Real Driver

Levick's weren't just looking for cheaper printing. They wanted to be able to say something real about their environmental footprint. Not a vague claim on a website, something they could actually point to. Businesses are under increasing pressure to report on this sort of thing, and frankly, a lot of the claims companies make are thin.

When we ran through the numbers on Epson's Heat-Free technology, it wasn't a hard conversation. No fuser unit means no heat means significantly less electricity. Fewer consumable parts means less waste. Up to 99% fewer consumables than a comparable laser setup isn't a marketing figure Epson made up. It's independently verified and it matches what we see in the field. If you're replacing eight laser machines with eight Epson inkjets across a business, the combined reduction in consumables, waste and energy is measurable from day one.

What They Ended Up With

Three Epson AM-C4000s for the main workloads. Forty pages a minute, A3 colour, Heat-Free. First page out in about 6 seconds. No warm-up wait. These replaced the dot matrix and the two or three legacy laser devices that were doing the heavy lifting.

Five smaller A4 Epson devices for the rest of the offices. Right machine for the right location. There's no point putting a 40ppm A3 colour device somewhere that prints five documents a day.

Our team handled the whole setup. Drivers configured, network integrated, paper trays loaded. They were printing on the first day. No IT contractor needed, no three-week wait for someone to come and plug things in.

What's Changed

The dot matrix is gone. Nobody misses the noise. The toner bill has dropped because the Epson ink system covers mono and colour from the same cartridges, and we monitor levels remotely so they never run out unexpectedly. The machines are quieter. The office is warmer in winter by a measurable amount, which is a strange thing to notice but makes sense when you take eight machines that run at operating temperature out of a room.

More than any of that, they can talk about it honestly. When a customer or a supplier asks about their environmental credentials, they can say they replaced a dot matrix and eight legacy laser printers with Heat-Free inkjet technology and reduced their consumable waste by up to 99%. That's a real thing. Not a pledge or a target. Something they've actually done.

If This Sounds Familiar

A lot of businesses are running print setups that grew without any plan behind them. Mix of machines, mix of suppliers, nobody sure what anything costs. If that's you, it's worth a conversation. We'll look at what you've got, tell you what it's actually costing and what a properly set-up fleet would look like. No obligation, no sales pitch. Just numbers. Ring us on 0800 009 6770.