Loire Impression has been a family story since 1996. Alexandre Leroy’s mother founded the company in Saumur, France, with two partners: three people and a single-colour offset press. The business grew steadily from there. Digital printing came first, then a move into wide-format. In 2024 the company moved again, into new positive-energy premises with a large photovoltaic array, new equipment and 35 employees.
Alexandre, now Managing Director at Loire Impression joined in 2018. Arriving as the founder's son gave him something rare: time to watch how a company of fifteen people really worked, without having to fix anything yet.
Then Covid arrived.
"We were never going to win on turnaround by running the machines faster"
The lockdown period was hard. It was also, as he puts it, a moment to breathe and ask a simple question: what is the path forward?
The answer came quickly, and it ruled out the obvious options.
We were not going to gain turnaround time by increasing the speed of our machines. And we were not going to find the skills or hire easily. That was only going to get worse.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
So the team went looking somewhere else. They mapped every task where their operators added little value, and where automation could be better, more reliable, more robust and faster. That is where Enfocus came in, with support from the team at Bluewest. He went to see Switch running at a colleague's site an hour away.
I had no idea Enfocus and Switch even existed. It took me ten minutes to decide. I said to myself, this is what we need.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
"If I pressed the off button today, I would have a riot"
The first reaction from the shop floor was not enthusiasm. It was a question.
When we presented the project to the teams, we felt a moment of hesitation. Hang on, if we automate all these tasks, what am I here for?
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
Six months later, the question had answered itself. Alexandre even told us he would have a riot on his hands if he took away the Enfocus tools they have now.
Today the teams work with Switch, PitStop Pro for preflight, and Review for soft proofing. Griffin is the most recent addition, following the move into wide-format digital printing.
Automation is a bit like a bag of crisps. Once you have opened it and put your hand in, you keep going back. Partly out of addiction, maybe. Mostly because you can see the benefits.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
The crossword puzzle with no clues
Ask Alexandre where Switch changed the game and he starts with reliability. Then he tells a story.
A few years ago the company printed a large run of placemats for truck-stop restaurants, part of a driver recruitment campaign for a client. Important work. To make the placemats a little more engaging, the designer had added a crossword puzzle.
The clues had been set to overprint in the supplied file.
It seemed so obvious to our prepress team that nobody checked it. It came out fine on the proof. On the offset run, it did not come out at all. So there was a beautiful crossword puzzle, with no clues.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
They spotted it at the end of the run. Everything had to be reprinted: waste, delay and a difficult phone call.
That cannot happen any more. For our customers, and for our teams, that reliability is a psychological comfort. For me, it is confidence in our ability to be compliant and dependable.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
He credits the partnership for making that stick.
With Samuel Tanguy and the Bluewest team, it works. It is fluid, it is natural. They know the tools and they know our reality, so when we decide to do something, it gets properly sized and it lands within the approved standards.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
Three times the volume, the same two people
The numbers make the case on their own.
Loire Impression’s prepress department, covering imposition, file handling and proof approval, has not grown. It still runs on two full-time equivalents.
Today I handle 600 to 650 jobs a month. A few years ago, I handled 150 to 200. Switch did not bring me that volume of work, but it allowed me to handle a large flow of jobs without stressing my teams, without pushing their heads under water, and without increasing my payroll.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
Confidence to move into something new
That capacity became a growth lever in an unexpected way. When the company diversified into wide-format printing in 2024, it was moving into processes, techniques and material flows it had never handled before. Job onboarding was not one of the unknowns.
We knew exactly how we would get jobs into that workshop, and we knew it would run. That problem was already behind us, so we could concentrate on the rest: discovering materials, new partners, new suppliers.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
Automation let the company grow in the area it already knew, sheet-fed print, and gave it the confidence to take on the area it did not.
Switch is the first investment a printer should make
The recruitment problem that started the whole project has not gone away. It has changed shape.
It is very hard to recruit someone who will only check files against a checklist. It is very hard to offer someone a job managing an inbox and sending out proofs. Switch does that job, and it does it well, so we can put our people on work that adds value and on meeting customer deadlines. I could list ten jobs I won because I was responsive, because I was a reliable and compliant partner.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
His conclusion is blunt.
Ten years ago I might have seen these tools as a nice extra, a bonus. Today it is simply the starting pack for a printer. Without automation, I do not see how you do the job. Not unless you exhaust yourself, and that has its limits. That is not how we want to work any more.
Alexandre Leroy, Managing Director at Loire Impression
Want to see what automation could do for your prepress?
Find out more about Switch, PitStop Pro, Review and Griffin.
