The post-press kit manufacturer and reseller posted sales of £9.4m from June 2012 to May 2013, signalling a 5% increase year-on-year. “Market conditions are still tough, but we’ve got such a talented and passionate team here and they’ve worked tirelessly this year – having a great product range also helps,” said Peter Jolly, who was promoted to UK managing director last September. The numbers are currently being audited, so Jolly declined to reveal contribution figures but he said that profit growth was looking to be in line with or slightly ahead of sales growth. “We are profitable and at the minute it looks like this year we will have recorded a five-year revenue and net profit high for the UK. So we’re looking like we’ll be back to where we were before the downturn,” he said. According to Jolly, the breadth of the company’s customer base; from office users and small implants, largely supplied by its established dealer reseller network, up to large inplants and commercial digital and litho operations were key to its growth. “We’ve got a nice spot in the market and we’re becoming increasingly relevant to larger printers too, we’re gaining significant traction with some of the top 50 companies from the PrintWeek Top 500 for example,” he added. The company is looking to develop its customer base further and as part of this strategy its set to make its Fespa debut later this month. The company is in the process of finalising its appearance at the wide-format show, where it is set to demonstrate one of its DC family of digital cutter/creasers. “A lot of our customers are heading towards the packaging market and that drove us to look at taking a stand at Fespa,” said Duplo international commercial manager Samantha Mee. Following the strong figures for 2012/2013 Jolly said the company was targeting sales of £10m in its new financial. To support this growth it was looking to increase headcount at the 65 staff operation by boosting its sales and marketing operation with five new appointments in the coming months. The company currently has no plans to bolster its headcount of 30 technical staff in the UK. “In the downturn we held on to our service staff because we realised that they were critical to our reputation, but the sales side was slightly whittled down. We’re now going to put our foot firmly back on the gas though,” said Jolly. The company is hosting an open house event on the 18-20 June at its Addlestone, Surrey headquarters – for more information on the Print Finishing First event, click here....

The post-press kit manufacturer and reseller posted sales of £9.4m from June 2012 to May 2013, signalling a 5% increase year-on-year. “Market conditions are still tough, but we’ve got such a talented and passionate team here and they’ve worked tirelessly this year – having a great product range also helps,” said Peter Jolly, who was promoted to UK managing director last September. The numbers are currently being audited, so Jolly declined to reveal contribution figures but he said that profit growth was looking to be in line with or slightly ahead of sales growth. “We are profitable and at the minute it looks like this year we will have recorded a five-year revenue and net profit high for the UK. So we’re looking like we’ll be back to where we were before the downturn,” he said. According to Jolly, the breadth of the company’s customer base; from office users and small implants, largely supplied by its established dealer reseller network, up to large inplants and commercial digital and litho operations were key to its growth. “We’ve got a nice spot in the market and we’re becoming increasingly relevant to larger printers too, we’re gaining significant traction with some of the top 50 companies from the PrintWeek Top 500 for example,” he added. The company is looking to develop its customer base further and as part of this strategy its set to make its Fespa debut later this month. The company is in the process of finalising its appearance at the wide-format show, where it is set to demonstrate one of its DC family of digital cutter/creasers. “A lot of our customers are heading towards the packaging market and that drove us to look at taking a stand at Fespa,” said Duplo international commercial manager Samantha Mee. Following the strong figures for 2012/2013 Jolly said the company was targeting sales of £10m in its new financial. To support this growth it was looking to increase headcount at the 65 staff operation by boosting its sales and marketing operation with five new appointments in the coming months. The company currently has no plans to bolster its headcount of 30 technical staff in the UK. “In the downturn we held on to our service staff because we realised that they were critical to our reputation, but the sales side was slightly whittled down. We’re now going to put our foot firmly back on the gas though,” said Jolly. The company is hosting an open house event on the 18-20 June at its Addlestone, Surrey headquarters – for more information on the Print Finishing First event, click here....

The package, ZCC 2.0 is the latest offering from the flatbed cutting and routing equipment manufacturer, and is commercially available now, according to a spokeswoman. “ZCC user interface and workflow suite is completely tailored to customers’ needs,” she said. “It integrates effortlessly with any production workflow and interactively guides the user through every phase of production finishing.” Zünd Cut Center 2.0 is designed for preparing and processing cutter-ready digital cut files. Files from all widely-used RIPs and nesting programs can be processed, without going through any additional file preparation saving time and money, she said. Another feature on the stand at Fespa will be a tandem vacuum system, a material-handling option available for the Zünd’s G3 and S3 cutters, which allows for loading of sheets and boards during production. UK sales director Peter Giddings said: “We are excited about some of the new features of Zünd Cut Centre 2.0, which we believe will be of interest to anyone just setting out on the digital cutting and finishing road as well as our existing users.”...

The package, ZCC 2.0 is the latest offering from the flatbed cutting and routing equipment manufacturer, and is commercially available now, according to a spokeswoman. “ZCC user interface and workflow suite is completely tailored to customers’ needs,” she said. “It integrates effortlessly with any production workflow and interactively guides the user through every phase of production finishing.” Zünd Cut Center 2.0 is designed for preparing and processing cutter-ready digital cut files. Files from all widely-used RIPs and nesting programs can be processed, without going through any additional file preparation saving time and money, she said. Another feature on the stand at Fespa will be a tandem vacuum system, a material-handling option available for the Zünd’s G3 and S3 cutters, which allows for loading of sheets and boards during production. UK sales director Peter Giddings said: “We are excited about some of the new features of Zünd Cut Centre 2.0, which we believe will be of interest to anyone just setting out on the digital cutting and finishing road as well as our existing users.”...

The winner, Katrina Wight, who used a hand-cranked, manually-operated CreaseStream Mini to crease 47 cards in a minute, received the £1,500 unit as her prize. The event took place at London’s Business Centre in Islington. Wight specialises in creating hand-drawn illustrations of dogs and cats and adapting them for greeting cards made from 100% recycled paper and card for her company, Katrina R Wight. “I use a scalpel to crease my cards, which works fine, but the CreaseStream produces a better result and is much, much faster, enabling me to make products that are more cost effective,” she said. CreaseStream founder, and managing director of Tech-ni-fold, Graham Harris said: “Many of our products require no electrical input, yet can produce more output than those that rely on such appliances. The competition gave us invaluable feedback, and the show has taught us a lot.” Harris said desigers fell into three categories, using basic scalpels or rulers to score their card stock, buying pre-scored substrates or outsourcing their artwork completely. “Because of the growing popularity of card creation coupled with the increase in digital print processing, the problems of cracking are becoming more evident, and there lies an opportunity,” he said. He said there weren’t enough simple and straight forward creasing solutions on the market to accommodate designers who could not justify the cost of an automatic machine. “Our rotary method of creasing lends itself to this market because it is faster and more accurate than most of the clumsy types of desktop solutions in the lower price bracket. We can address some of the market, and now hope to develop something to suit the majority.” The CreaseStream Mini range starts with the manual hand-fed version, for materials from 75 to 400gsm and up to 52cm in width. Optional micro-perforating devices give users more scope to produce a wider range of finishing applications. A quick-feed version is supplied with a sheet-feeding mechanism that speeds up output to an average of 3,000sph, while an auto-feed version can produce more than 4,000sph....