Speaking about the co-location of SDUK with Printwear & Promotion Live (see preview on p40), event director Tony Gardner said, ‘Sign & Digital UK 2024 is the first SDUK under our ownership, and we are really looking forward to seeing how the co-located event works. All shows must continue to develop their offering and we believe a co-located event is key to help grow the show, and to attract a new audience into the world of sign-making and large-format digital printing. Visitors will have the chance to explore the latest technology and innovations first-hand, with many of these advancements being showcased in the UK for the first time.’

The exhibition will be complemented by the International Sign Association (ISA-UK) Explains Lounge. Now in its third year, the Lounge will host a series of presentations and panel discussions designed to inform and educate visitors to the show on the latest developments, trends and innovations and how they will impact the large format printing, sign-making and visual communications industry.

Topics include managing your sign business, business advice sessions, daily panel and feature sessions. The Women in Sign and Graphics session focuses on their contributions to the industry, while The Printing Charity will share ways to support mental well-being within the sector.

On the show floor, Hybrid Services, the exclusive UK and Ireland distributor for Mimaki Europe, is introducing three new printers at the event. These are the Mimaki TxF300-75 direct-to-film printer launched in August 2023, the UJV100-160Plus LED UV printer announced in September 2023, which will have its first UK exhibition showing, plus the first showing of the Mimaki UCJV330-160 LED UV integrated printer/cutter. The latter is a 1.6m production machine that Hybrid says offers ‘highly creative capabilities coupled with ultra-low running costs’.

RGB and Oki Europe are teaming up to support motor vehicle number plate printing with a complete ‘business in a box’ solution. They will be featuring the A3+ Oki Pro9542 printer, which includes white toner, and the Oki C650, described as ‘the world’s smallest high performance colour printer’  but still suitable for commercial print.

UK Feather Flags will showcase various products, including a new line of Eco fabric exhibition display solutions that it says demonstrate its commitment to sustainable signage. The company aims to build brand awareness, forge new business relationships, and gain insights into emerging market trends.

Sign Trade Supplies plans to display its range of sustainable aluminium profiles, sign fixings, and components, emphasising value to customers. The stand will also feature an interactive element, adding a ‘fun and engaging dimension for attendees’.

Assured Signage aims to use the show to highlight the potential of digital signage as a new revenue stream for traditional sign-makers and printers. It will present its media player, Sureview Genesis, which is claimed to offer offering exceptional performance and a low cost of ownership. The stand will also feature displays from Papercast, showcasing e-ink displays ideal for outdoor applications.

Roland DG  is taking space at both SDUK and Printwear & Promotion. At the former, it will showcase its new VersaObject MO-240, which replaces the company’s popular LEF2 Series and is designed to enhance direct-to-object printing with new levels of productivity. For those interested in signage, interior design and vehicle wraps, the company will also be showcasing its TrueVIS AP-640 resin printer, plus the popular TrueVis LG-640 UV print and cut device, and the 2.4 x 1.2m VersaObject EU-1000MF flatbed that can handle objects up to 95mm thick. These will be backed by demonstrations of the DG Connect software app.

Brownings, in partnership with Magnwall, plans to showcase novel wireless electrification systems at SDUK 2024. This allows users to mount electrical accessories onto the face of tension fabric systems, eliminating the need for complex wiring. The stand will also feature Brownings’ range, including TexSign tension fabric systems, Flex face products and bespoke snap frames.

BestSub will showcase its latest engraving machine, craft heat presses, Otter DtF system, and a comprehensive selection of craft supplies, materials, and tools.

InkTec had been planning to show a brand new printer, the Jetrix LXa5 flatbed, but the conflict around the Suez Canal has delayed it, so the firm will focus on sustainability, showing how Jetrix printers can be upgraded to move with the times and continue to deliver on their initial investment. The Jetrix LXi8 UV flatbed will be present, sporting a new user interface that improves the nesting and mapping capabilities of the printer to minimise media wastage. There will also be the first showing of the Jetrix XGR320 3.2m UV LED roll printer. Both machines will be printing with GreenGuard Gold accredited inks.

QPS will feature four LED UV printers from ColorJet on its stand – the 49sqm/hr Verve 2513M flatbed, the Verve Mini 1050 x 1650mm compact flatbed, the 2m width Vulcan Hybrid X and the 3.2m Vulcan 3201M which offers at top speed of 76sqm/hr. Collectively these cover a full gamut of wide-format applications from small signage and promotional items to high volume roll substrates, plus rigid materials including ACP, foam, board, flute board, glass, ceramic tiles and wood. QPS will also feature the Nazdar range of inks.

Drytac won’t have a stand of its own, but its products will feature on Epson, Hybrid Services and Roland’s stands, as well as that of exclusive distribution partner Premier Paper Group. While Premier will display a selection of Drytac materials and can advise about the full range, Epson will feature SpotOn Floor 200 and ReTac Textures Sand wallcovering films, while Hybrid will be printing Polar Chrome reflective PET, Polar Choice White film and Visiprint films. Roland’s stand will show ReTac ChalkMate, which yields a blackboard-type finish.

Another first will be the debut of the SC-V1000 A4 flatbed printer from Epson. This is an entry-level flatbed printer aimed at small businesses in the promotional goods industry. Described as highly compact and affordable, V1000 can print directly on a wide range of substrates with a thickness of up to 70mm, including acrylics, polycarbonates, PVC, aluminium, metal, polyester, foamboard, styrene, wood and stone, making it suitable for creating promotional and personalised items.

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Recognising Excellence sees an expo and networking lunch take place at the Leonardo Hotel and Conference Centre, Hinckley Island, followed by a gala dinner and awards night that celebrates the innovation, achievements and hard work of industry members.

Chair of the IPIA’s events subcommittee, Matthew Ruff (sales and marketing director of mail specialist Reliance), explained the value of the event: ‘The wealth of information and education available to attendees during the Expo is very comprehensive, providing them with critical insights into how the latest print and media technology can support their growth or diversification ambitions. It is so important to take the time every so often to spend a day working on your business, and not just in it.

‘The networking lunch is then a platform for attendees to talk directly to prospective customers – no matter which part of the supply chain they come from – and potentially to generate new business and beneficial relationships.

‘For those who would like to stay on for the evening festivities, we then have a wonderful programme of amazing food, live entertainment, celebration and the chance to do further high-quality networking.’

The expo and business networking hub run from 11:00 to 15:00, with a pause for the networking lunch and the IPIA chairman’s address. The expo will feature more than 20 print technology and media exhibitors.

Tickets to the Recognising Excellence event start with a daytime pass and lunch at the Expo and Business Networking Hub, rising to a complete package including overnight accommodation and breakfast at the Leonardo Hotel.

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SWD’s Luke Drogan explained, ‘We took delivery of an Agfa Jeti Tauro H3300 LED hybrid wide-format press in late 2019 and during Covid it worked 24/7 producing the many miles of social distancing graphics for our customers. It quickly became the production team’s favoured print machine, and it was the reliability of the Jeti Tauro that gave us the confidence in the Agfa product.  So, when we decided to add another dye-sub machine to cope with the demand of our growing soft signage business, the Agfa Avinci was a key printer to review.’

The Avinci CX3200 can print both directly to textile and to transfer paper at a speed of up to 270sqm/hr. Its offline fixation via a separate calender unit is less of an energy concern for SWD than might be expected, as the company has an existing solar panel array that is being expanded by a factor of four during February 2023, plus an off-site wind turbine, which are expected to make the business fully self-sufficient for power generation.

SWD will largely use its new dye-sub printer to produce backlit textile graphics for PoS and exhibition work. The print fleet is complemented by  large-scale finishing including laser cutting technology on an 8x3m bed to heat seal material edges and prevent woven media from fraying.

Mr Drogan added, ‘We are already impressed with the results of the Agfa Avinci, there is a robustness and consistency to [Agfa’s] machines which means we can run them confidently. We are already talking about investing in more Agfa machines.’

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Based in Tetbury, the company is a regular attendee at Glee, the a UK garden and outdoor living trade show. As the event attracts thousands of visitors, Woodlodge sought to produce a design that would not only stand out in the busy hall at the June 2022 event, but also reflect the planet-friendly nature of the show.

The HP Latex R2000 was used to print graphics onto Xanita Fibreboard, an engineered fibreboard made from recycled used cardboard boxes and supplied by Antalis. Combined with the water-based Latex inks, Woodlodge was able to deliver on its sustainable pledge while at the same time create an eye-catching stand that drew plenty of attention.

Woodlodge’s graphic and print production manager Steve Partington said, ‘This year we had our largest stand ever with a footprint of just over 1300sqm, spanning the width of the NEC hall. With such a large space, we needed to ensure that the stand flowed and that our current and potential customers realised that they were still on the Woodlodge stand as they explored our products.

‘As such, we needed to ensure that we produced an impactful stand with a view to minimising cost, but also ensuring a strong brand message was communicated. Over 1800sqm of print and cut materials was produced for this event. The speed in which we produced the stand was amazing; we were certainly up against a tight deadline.’

Woodlodge has been running its HP Latex R2000 printer for more than two years now and has used the machine on a wide range of projects.

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The company, founded in 2014, primarily operates in the education, healthcare, large corporate and SME sectors. It aims to provide a one-stop shop for all printing requirements, specialising in small and large format digital print, exhibition graphics, signage and installation, litho print and bespoke label printing.

Since the installation of the Colorado 1630, Beacon Print has been able to produce higher quality print  for its customers more quickly. The printer’s application flexibility has also allowed the company to enter the digital wallpaper printing market. Thanks to the its low ink and energy requirements, the Colorado 1630 is also said to have delivered significant savings for the company.

Sean Gamston, sales director at Beacon Print, said, ‘Since we began working with Canon and installed a Colorado 1630 device, we’ve become a much more competitive and cost-efficient business. Our new printer is extremely reliable, offering flexibility and consistently excellent quality work. Thanks to the installation, we are now in a stronger position to explore new customer opportunities and markets.’

Duncan Smith, production direct sales director at Canon UK & Ireland, said, ‘This is the first installation of the Colorado 1630 in the UK and we are very proud of the results that the device has brought to this important customer. With its excellent print quality, versatility and productivity, it delivers the ideal technology to help Beacon Print deliver outstanding results for its customers.’

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The Preston-based wide-format digital printing company, founded in 2004, primarily serves the exhibitions industry. Three years ago, it bought a Jetrix printer, but a power surge at the company’s production facility rendered it unusable and non-repairable. A part solution response was to purchase an HP 800 Latex printer to output banners , while all other print work was temporarily outsourced.

The HP Latex printer was replaced with a Mimaki UJV100-160 from CMYUK. This is a dedicated roll-to-roll UV curable printer that offers high quality, stability, and productivity due to a NCU (Nozzle Check Unit), NRS (Nozzle Recovery System), and MAPS4 (Mimaki Advanced Pass System4). The DAS (Dot Adjustment System) incorporated into the new 100 series printers means that dot position and feed correction are now automated, reducing operator workload.

With the Mimaki now handling all the former Latex work, the company still needed to manage pop-up and panelling jobs, which often use a heavy 465-micron media. The EFI Vutek Pro 32r+ is a 3.2m wide production level printer with a four-colour system with a white ink option and 7pl drop size for high quality.

Mr Symonds added, ‘We came to the conclusion that a big industrial printer from EFI was just what was needed. I’ve always seen EFI printers as the Rolls Royce of the digital printing industry, lots of companies use them, and the technology is proven. The Jetrix was a good piece of kit when it worked, although I found the prints to be quite grainy probably because they print at 14pL. The Vutek 32r+ prints at a much higher definition at double the speed and allows for dual roll printing.

‘The EFI demonstration showing how the dual rolls worked was impressive. We’ve printed dual rolls since, flawlessly. We’ve also run triple rolls and that’s worked well too.’

At the time of installing the Vutek Pro 32r +, Amira Bouchiba, CMYUK academy manager, implemented an automated workflow that does away with the need to manually create files in the company’s existing but now defunct i-Cut software. The machine has an in-built Fiery RIP that creates both a print file for the printer and a cut file that it sends to the Kongsberg cutting table.

Mr Symonds said, ‘Fiery has improved our workflow. It has completely removed the iCut route and has saved us a great deal of time.’

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Digital Printer is able to confirm that Ricoh will be exhibiting at IPEX 2017. More information will follow on which products and solutions will be exhibited by the digital press vendor and will be updated here over coming days as details are released.

‘This is good news for the printing industry and a great boost for IPEX,’ said Digital Printer publisher Rob Mulligan.

Digital Printer and Ricoh are also hosting a golf simulator challenge at IPEX with daily and overall prizes for the longest drive and nearest the pin.

If you think you are the John Daly of the printing industry and able to hit the longest drive or the most accurate with a nearest-the-pin competition, come and show us at the Digital Printer golf challenge sponsored by Ricoh on stand B393.
  
There will be daily prizes as well as an overall prize for both competitions, including eternal fame in having your name and picture published in Digital Printer.

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The Guildhall Library in Aldermanbury, London, will be the site of a three-month exhibition by the Stationers Company.

Running from 1 June to 31 August, this is the first time that the Stationers Company has held an exhibition away from Stationers’ Hall in Ave Maria Lane. The exhibition covers topics including education, newspapers, skills and copyright in the communications and content industries.

The exhibition, which is free to the public, is complemented by a series of public lectures. The first, on 1 June, will be given by Stationers’ Company Clerk William Alden and is a history of the company entitled ‘Can I order 1000 A4 pads please? Sorry, there must be some confusion!’

This is followed on 13 July by Margaret Willes on ‘Famous Stationers through the Centuries’ and Helen Esmonde, Past Master and first lady Master of the company, on 3 August, who will give a talk entitled ‘From Genesis to Google’, about the role of education.

The exhibition is open during the opening hours of the Guildhall Library. Tickets for the lectures are available from the Stationers’ website or through the Guildhall Library one.

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It took something like two to three years, but eventually Oasis Graphic Co – the Berkshire-based exhibition and events wide format specialist – found the MIS that it was looking for.

Four years ago the company came to the conclusion that its homespun Filemaker Pro-based system was becoming obsolete, and it began the search for a replacement. A key consideration that the new system needed to meet was to help Oasis to centralise information about its costs, to bring clarity to the actual costs of a project. It also wanted a system that was easy to use, had popularity in the industry, and that came with a pledge of constant development to meet the future demands of the business.

In truth, there are few MIS systems that are tailored for the wide format printer, but Clarity Professional is one such, and it was this that the Cookham company settled upon. The software was fully implemented in time for the start of the firm’s financial year in April 2014.

Operations director Andy Delpech told Digital Printer: ‘The look and feel of the system compared to the others stood out. It seemed to do everything that I intuitively was trying to achieve with Filemaker. I guess you could say it worked how my brain works. I like the Calc Wizards in particular; they are very methodical and thorough. We can bring purchasing, relationship management, and cost management all seamlessly together, whereas previously we had the information across separate parts of the network. It is easier to manage like this.’

Oasis Graphic Co specialises in work for the exhibitions, events and office/corporate environment branding sectors, and has produced graphics for customers such as Sky, Pizza Express and Blackberry. With 24 staff, the firm has been steadily growing since its formation in 1988. Growth brings with it its own pressures however, and the MIS can play a key role here.

‘The opportunities we are getting are more prestigious, and you find yourself competing against different competitors for some great work, and that’s when you’ve really got to up your game,’ said Mr Delpech.

Previously, suppliers’ prices would be kept on a spreadsheet and he would have to rely on these and his industry knowledge to put together a price. ‘As much as you tried, you could really not do a cost for a client in a short space of time, like Clarity does. Once it has been set up you can pull all that data together very quickly.

‘It gives us more control over the work. We have got a great understanding of costs now and it has allowed us to be very specific and flexible with our clients as well. We are very much into the detail here and Clarity allows us to do that.’

The Clarity software is integrated with the company’s accounting system, which helps to streamline the administration side of the business. At this point, Oasis does not offer a web to print service because the nature of the work is so bespoke.

Mr Delpech professes himself to be ‘pretty happy’ with the way that Clarity Professional is helping the business out. It has streamlined purchasing and provides more information to the production team to allow for better planning. Having centralised information has allowed Oasis to take on more work, and project managers appreciate having a clearer picture on the time required and the costs incurred for individual jobs. They can now, for example, be on top of how much material they need to buy in.

Clarity itself as a vendor is always open to suggestions, always looking forward and developing, said Mr Delpech. ‘As soon as we started with the system I had an influx of ideas, and Clarity were great about that. Looking to the future, we are considering bringing in their production scheduling workflow to finish the system off. That’s my next aim, when we have got a year under our belts.’

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Committed space already takes 2013 floor plan area to just under 30,000 m2, equalling the final footprint of Fespa 2010 in Munich three years ago.

The South Hall of the ExCeL exhibition centre, which has a 100% digital focus, is now sold out, and demand for remaining space in the mixed North Hall is high. Many digital exhibitors have increased their stand space compared with 2010.

The top ten exhibitors in 2013 are HP, Canon (incorporating Océ), Agfa, Durst, EFI, Fujifilm, Orafol, Mimaki, Kornit and M&R. The ten largest stands will collectively occupy 15.5% more stand space than the top ten in 2010, indicating the growing investment being made by major suppliers in their presence.

The organisers expects the final layout of the show to firmly emphasise the dominance of digital, while the event still offers a strong screen printing line up, with exhibitors including M&R, Saati, Kiian, Demak, Sun Chemical, Sefar, Macdermid Autotype and Encres Dubuit. Textile printing remains a focus for the event, with more than 102 exhibitors showing textile printing applications and the 6500 m2  ‘Fabric’ feature on the show floor specifically designed to meet the needs of garment printers and decorators. 

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