The Middlesex-based business card, stationery and promotional items printer Drayton Press has 15-staff and a turnover of roughly £1.5m. The group also includes Uxbridge Press, and Drayton Gifts. Gaia Press was a tenth of the size and had five staff.
Drayton Press’s chief executive Piers Miles said it could now offer Gaia Services’ customers a wider range of products, including office supplies and internet services.
"The acquisition has opened up a new client base for us and we can offer them 75,000 promotional merchandise products and 40,000 office supply products as well as e-brochures and web hosting," he added.
Miles confirmed that Gaia will no longer exist as a trading name, that the company’s premises have been closed and Drayton Press has not taken on any of its staff.
Drayton bought Gaia Services’ Konika C6500 digital printer and Color Track Smart scanner. All of Gaia Services’ other equipment was sold to other companies before its sale to Drayton Press.
This was part of a £100,000 investment in new equipment, including a large format scanner, binding and finishing equipment and a Ricoh Pro C751 cut-sheet colour digital press.
At around £60,000, the digital press was the company’s largest single investment and will replace its existing Océ CPS 800 and CPS 900 digital printers.
Whereas the Océ machines printed at 30spm, the Ricoh Pro C751 prints at 75spm on a range of substrates of up to 350gsm.
Miles said he was impressed by the Ricoh machine’s registration, image quality and solid colours when printing solid black across SRA3 sheets.
"We are looking at going into cross-media marketing so having a better quality printer which can produce more glamorous products on a range of substrates will help," he said.
