The business, based in Nayland, Suffolk, installed a Xerox Versant 180 from ASL Group in September, an Adpak shrinkwrapper and a B&R Moll Compact folder-gluer for small-format folding in October, a Duplo PFi Di-Cut 300 rotary die-cutter in November, and an Epson SureColor SC-P9500 photo printer from Colourbyte around a month ago.
Spingold managing director Ed Oakes told Printweek: “We are a general design and digital printing company and we’ve done general printing for the last 20 years but in the last five or six years we’ve gone into specialising in playing cards, game cards, tarot, trump cards – that type of industry.
“We’ve gradually been building that up because it’s quite a specialist sort of niche market, and getting the right machinery and materials is the key to it.
“When [the first] lockdown happened last March we furloughed a couple of members of staff at the time, because you never know what’s going to happen, but after March and April we started to pick up and it got busier and busier because people were bored and buying online.
“Two of our customers were buying card games from us that we were printing and they were selling on Amazon, and as it got towards Christmas we couldn’t keep up with demand, it was so busy. That’s when we looked to add in all the new kit to help us speed up production.”
The Duplo PFi Di-Cut 300 rotary die-cutter is the company’s second. It had bought the first – an identical model – in 2016. The B&R Moll folder-gluer, meanwhile, has enabled the business to automate a process that it had previously done by hand.
“Our card boxes now go through that. Previously we would die-cut them and then put them together by hand, but it just got to the point where we were doing tens of thousands. This is probably 20 times faster – it really has made a difference,” said Oakes.
The Versant 180 is the company’s second. It also runs a Ricoh Pro C7100 and Xerox D110 mono printer on the small-format side while on the large-format side it operates two HP Latex machines – a 360 and a 370 – and an Epson Stylus Pro 9900 photo printer.
In September the business also took on three people who had lost their jobs at other print companies due to the coronavirus pandemic, boosting its headcount to seven. Oakes said that in terms of sales the last 12 months had been the company’s “best year on record”.
Spingold’s playing cards side is driven through its B2C site Print from your Sofa, while it also serves clients including garden centres from its 557sqm premises.
