The refurbished device, which is additional to the Stratford, East London-based digital printer’s portfolio, was supplied by Morgana and installed last week.

The Vivid Laminating Matrix 370 will be used to laminate jobs including brochures, folders, and business cards for clients including hotel and restaurant owners, event organisers, and festival management teams.

The device has joined a raft of other finishing kit at Brightside including a Morgana Documaster, a Duplo DB-290 perfect binder, and a Graphtec F-Mark automatic sheetfed cutting system that was installed in April.

The business also runs a Trident desktop laminator and a Seal 62 wide-format laminator, but the new machine will enable it to keep the lamination of larger run SRA3 jobs in-house.

Brightside print sales director Laurence Hobbs said: “Since the Covid lockdown rules changed on 19 July, the London printing enquiries from bars and restaurants almost doubled. I see a boom ahead of us at this rate. The addition of the Matrix 370 laminator to our plant list will help us cope with this extra demand.”

He told Printweek the purchase followed a review of some other options on the market.

“I did look at a couple of things, although budget is obviously always a factor, and floorspace was also important as we’ve got a compact premises, and this is quite a small machine.”

Brightside has been in operation for more than 30 years. From its circa-150sqm site, the four-staff business offers a comprehensive range of printing services including stationery, banners, and specialist printing. It also offers various web design and marketing services.