It can also refurbish older machines, especially from the John T Marshall range. While hand-operated stamping machines might seem a little old-fashioned, foiling and embossing has a dedicated global following in luxury and bespoke goods and print and Metallic Elephant sells them globally. These machines use up-to-date technology including parts made on the company’s own CNC machines. An equally important side of the business is making metal dies for embossing and foiling, as well as polymer plates for letterpress printing.
It also sells hot foil ribbons, some from the Foilco range, though a dedicated website set up in 2023: foils-online.co.uk.
“Our customers are in many different industries, packaging, book binding, greetings card producers, wedding stationers, small home users and larger companies,” says business development director Vincent Wilson. Named customers include the brands Acqua di Parma, Asprey, Burberry, Cambridge Satchel Company, Dr Martens, Hugo Boss, Hunter Boots, Joules, Nike, Paul Smith and Smythson.
Sales split pretty well 50/50 between machinery and dies, he says. “The majority of our die customers are from the UK, while our machine sales are more 70% abroad and 30% UK. Over the past 10 years we have grown 158% to a turnover of £2.5m.”
The company was set up in 2007 by husband-and-wife team Karl and Ros French. They still run the company, with Karl concentrating on the machinery and Ros the die- and plate-making side. The company has grown to employ 20 people today including the directors, and it has gradually expanded from a single unit on a farm in Frating, near Colchester, to take over most of the site. Vincent Wilson is their brother-in-law, who joined the company in 2014. Karl’s nephew Jack Martiniak joined in 2020 as an apprentice working on the CNC machines.
The factory’s plant and facilities include three-axis CNC machining centres, a CNC lathe, a vertical tooling mill, a MIG and TIG welding shop, and a 20ft paint spray booth with bake function.
Originally Karl was an engineer who spent 20 years working for John T Marshall, a long-established maker of die-stamping machines that was set up around 1900 in London EC1. It was later purchased by the Hircock family in 1943 and expanded into a group of related companies. There was a foil-maker in Birmingham, a die-etcher in Witham and a machine manufacturer in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, while the sales office remained London.
In 2001 the company moved to a single site in Chelmsford but it no longer makes machines. A new company, Colourfoil, was formed in 2001, to take over the manufacture and supply aspects of both John T Marshall machines and Mackrell & Co, which made plates and dies.
Karl French initially moved with the machinery business to Colourfoil, where he first met Ros, who had a pre-press and printing background. Karl developed ideas of his own about building new machines and so set up Metallic Elephant with Ros.
Alongside the move to Chelmsford, it also acquired Impress Marking Equipment and renamed itself Colourfoil Ltd. As machine building dwindled, the company moved back to Clacton-on-Sea to concentrate on dies and foils, though it still lists some John T Marshall designs with the Colourfoil brand.
Ros joined the company to work with hot foil die manufacture, using skills already learned in pre-press for print. Karl was an engineer at heart and wanted to keep supporting the John T Marshall brand. So he left with Ros to form their own company. “As the JTM presses become rarer it seemed a natural progression to make their own presses, built to the same exacting standards as John T Marshall,” says Wilson.
Machinery range
Metallic Elephant’s own machines are called the KSF series, after Karl French’s initials. Designed and built in Essex, they feature the Metallic Elephant name in the frame castings. They’re available for testing in Metallic Elephant’s showroom. Prices range from £1,605 up to £5,000.
The smallest machine is the entry level KSF One, a small desktop personalisation model with a single lever pull and a heated stamping head that swings up and forward for easier placement of brass letters and ornaments in its self-centring clamp holder. There’s an engraved ruled table for easy alignment of jobs. Positioning of the job item and foil pieces are manual, helped by movable side and rear gauges, then the lever is pulled to press the heated dies into the job, the foil transfers, and the excess is peeled away.
KSF Mini uses the same strong cast iron body as the One, but the table is reduced to 250 x205mm. The overall footprint is 400x255mm and it’s 4kgs lighter.
The KSF Two is for larger items and has a raised platen bed on an extending arm that can take hollow leather items such as shoes or handbags. Again the stamping head takes individual brass characters.
KSF Three is a clamshell platen press for die plates, with a 200x250mm print area and a movable bottom positioning stop. It’s still hand-fed but intended for longer runs on standard sized paper or card sheets. There’s a mechanical job counter. It uses hot foil rolls with automatic peel-off and advance between impressions, as the press jaws open.
The sophisticated KSF Four has a mix of features from the One and Two. It has a temperature controller with digital readout, and a head unit that can be moved back and forth over the larger bed area, and up and down to accommodate larger items such as boxes or handbags. The bed has an engraved positioning grid and there are movable clamp stops, plus and a swing-out guide below the printhead to show exactly where the stamp will go when the lever is pulled. Again foil pieces are positioned manually and peeled away afterwards.
Metallic Elephant is willing to modify standard designs or even design completely new ones for custom orders.
Refurbishments
Metallic Elephant can also recondition older John T Marshall foil printers and Impress Marking machines. Karl French worked on all the models it can recondition, and was at the concept of the DUT-21 and Marshall Series 98 which were successors to the first Marshall Platen, the Series 80.
“When we first started, we utilised Karl’s past experience with the John T Marshall brand,” says Wilson. “Karl was one of the only people who had worked on the majority of JTM presses and could offer support on those presses.” As time went on the JTM presses became scarcer so the company concentrated increasingly on its own designs. “We do still offer support on the JTM presses and now have the advantage we can make most parts that are needed if we don’t have them on the shelf. The JTM presses were built to last and it’s quite sad to hear that a lot of companies put them in the skip believing they couldn’t be repaired!”
Apart from the hand presses, Metallic Elephant reconditions and sells pneumatic machines, mostly the older JTM range and the Impress Marking Systems models.
“We have invested in programming new PLCs that means we can use the frames of the JTM presses, but add all-new air parts and wiring, so we can carry on supporting them.”
PLCs are programmable logic controllers, ie industrial control computers. “Many of the older JTM and PBE Pneumatic machines have control boards that rendered the machines useless once they broke.”
Plate-making
The other half of the business is plate- and die-making. Metallic Elephant offers dies either etched from magnesium alloy or engraved in brass as plates or individual characters. The range of formats is from very small 2x3in, up to 8x10in. It produces machined brass characters and plates using a CNC machine. Brass has good heat retention, which matters for consistent hot foiling.
Wilson says: “There are pros and cons for both metals. Brass is the premium product, but magnesium can offer price savings. We tend to advise on an adaption to the customer’s press to save ordering metal-mounted blocks. Most hot foil presses can have standard plates – not type high. We can also mount plates on wood, mainly for letterpress use.”
The Toyobo brand polymer plates are primarily intended for letterpress printing – bespoke luxury stationery often combines letterpress work with foiling and stamping. Thicknesses of 0.95mm and 1.52mm foil-backed plates are offered, and these can be mounted on wooden blocks to bring them to type height if needed. The polymer plates can be used as foiling and embossing dies for short runs, but for longer runs and repeats the metal dies are sharper and better. Polymer plates can also be produced for use as counters for the metal embossing/debossing plates.
Metallic Elephant’s website (www.metallicelephant.co.uk) has a useful set of information on embossing and debossing and helpful guides to digital artwork submission for the popular design apps.
Although machinery manufacture and plate making are all on the same farm site, Wilson says they are kept well separate. “The etching part of the business is across the farm from the machines. We cannot risk the chemicals from etching effecting the CNC equipment.”
STAR PRODUCTS
The KSF 3 platen and KSF Mini presses are the biggest sellers. Metallic Elephant is still investing to stay on top of its game. In the past year it has taken delivery of a third XYZ CNC machining centre. A second Lüscher imaging unit was due at the start of February for magnesium dies, while a fourth etching machine is due in March. “We constantly reinvest in new equipment and have backups for all systems,” says Wilson. And finally, why the name Metallic Elephant? You’ll need to ask for yourself, because Karl will only tell visitors in person!
