The challenge

Originally established as a litho and copy shop in Bath and Chippenham in 1987, Nettl Digiprint has transformed and diversified over the years, becoming a Nettl partner in 2015 and now providing a wide range of digital and wide-format printed products and services. 

Gregory, who came on board in 1998 has increasingly driven the business with an emphasis on environmental targets, becoming carbon neutral in 2015 and Climate Positive in 2019 and moving its Chippenham production facility to a 300sqm, A-rated energy efficient premises in December 2022 producing signs, display and exhibition work. 

After installing an HP Latex R1000 early last year, alongside its existing 800W at the site, the company was able to launch a new eco-friendly range of products, which resulted in a marked increase in new clients and orders. The knock-on effect for the company, which was still cutting board by hand or ordering in pre-cut board, was a major bottle-neck in finishing.

“We had a 30%-40% increase in orders just on the eco-range and it prompted us to look at streamlining our finishing production, including cutting all of the eco-board,” Gregory notes. 

The method

After consulting with the team, Gregory decided it was time to bring all of the firm’s outsourced cutting and routing in-house.

He explains: “We needed to keep quality control of the eco range; sending boards out to other signage finishers and having them returned damaged or cut wrongly was just not an option.

“Amongst other things, we specifically wanted a machine that was capable of cutting Xanita board from Antalis and that could take jobs straight from the R1000,” he adds. 

The team went to see a wide range of machines including “the usual suspects” in cutting and routing, as well as the offering from Leicester-based Vivid, with which the business has a long-running tie-up. 

“We already had a very good relationship with Vivid for lamination and they’d just started heavily promoting their Veloblade Nexus, which we’d seen at Sign & Digital when it was first launched. 

“This was a heavy production machine for us, a quality build for high-end production and it did everything we needed and more. It was far more economical than some others and built more robustly too.” 

“The software already fitted with our systems as well, so we could print directly onto board with the HP R1000 and then straight onto the Veloblade and ready to go. The process was so much quicker,” he adds. 

Budgeting for the new device was tricky according to Gregory, because although they had some flexibility, they didn’t want to have too much initial outlay and while they had come up with a ballpark figure, they found that “the more traditionally popular” machines were outside of this, while the Veloblade was closer to the mark. 

Gregory says with the increase in production from the R1000, from the eco-range alone, he would have needed another two staff to do the finishing work manually. 

“I worked out the cost and time on that, multiplied it by four or five years, as well as being able to produce a much more accurate cut for our signs and having the capacity to grow and the Veloblade investment came in well under what the manual labour cost would have been. It was kind of a no-brainer.”

Another key consideration and a factor in the final decision, was the fact that Vivid is local. 

“We like them as they are a UK-based business and that was a big deal for us, particularly with the support network; they’re only a couple of hours away if ever anything goes wrong,” explains Gregory. 

 The result

Due to the 20-year relationship between the two businesses, Gregory was able to negotiate a lease-purchase deal equivalent to a £60,000 investment and the device was installed in mid-2023. 

“Getting us up and running was seamless,” he states. After a two-day install, with two engineers and some thorough training from the Vivid team, all of the site’s finishing production was switched onto the Veloblade after the first day. 

The difference for the business in terms of production turnaround was “night and day”, according to Gregory. 

“When we were manually finishing, we suggested around a week turnaround on production to customers. But having the capacity to print jobs multi-up on sheets through the HP and bung the board straight onto the Veloblade, we were able to turn them around in an hour. 

“We were also a lot more efficient, so rather than doing one-off jobs we can multi-up and squeeze on as many jobs as possible to save on materials, energy and time.”

Gregory says by increasing capacity so much the business was quickly able to increase its marketing and production specifically of its eco-range, launching two new brands, and started attracting a higher grade of business from organisations such as schools, councils and universities who were looking for businesses with eco-credentials in order to hit their own targets. 

So, things ramped up quickly after the Veloblade install, but the real test for the device was yet to come. 

In December 2023, Nettl Digiprint decided to close its high-street shop in Chippenham, moving production to a 150sqm facility next door to its existing Chipphenham factory. Meanwhile, it retained its Bath high-street studio as a small R&D retail site to explore end user needs. 

Concurrently, with the collapse of Nettl supplier Works Manchester, as a result of PFI Group’s disastrous acquisition spree, Nettl Digiprint stepped in to take over the production of all signage and wide-format work impacted by the crisis.

“It was crazy, it literally happened overnight,” says Gregory. “When we took the Nettl production we were worried the Veloblade wouldn’t be able to keep up, but we’re now producing signage for 150 studios around the UK. 

“It processes hundreds of jobs a day. It was more than capable of doing what we needed in-house, but we had no idea how it would fare when we increased our signage production by what feels like 1,000% overnight. 

It was more than able to keep up, which is just incredible and down to the due diligence we did before we made the purchase. It’s enabled us to scale very quickly without having to invest more at the time,” he remarks. 

The only thing, he comments, that he didn’t note previously was that changing the router on the Veloblade is a manual process rather than an in-line option, which slows down the operation a bit but he says it’s not a big issue. 

With the huge workload increase, Gregory says, although as a lease-purchase there’s a financial cost of around £1,000/month for the cutting table, it now pays for itself in the first couple of days each month. 

Prior to the expansion, Nettl Digiprint was turning over around £500,000 a year but the business is now billing an extra £40,000 a month to the Nettl network. “It’s almost doubled our turnover,” he states. 

With such fast growth, Gregory has taken on three extra staff already this year in Chippenham and is currently interviewing for more vacancies in sign production and finishing that have been created by the extra capacity. 

The business currently employs three people in Bath and 11 in Chippenham, but that is set to grow. 

In terms of kit, Gregory has just ordered a new Easymount Hybrid Hover from Vivid, a 3m mounting and laminating table that he expects to arrive by the end of June. 

“We can use it to mount, laminate and put application tapes on pretty much everything, so again it will streamline our production. It will give us extra speed and capability.” 

And with a small bottleneck in banner production developing, Gregory also has his eye on a new HP Latex device, either a 700 or 800W, he says. However, the facility is fast running out of room, with the only possible space for a new production printer being a mezzanine floor, which is not ideal. 

So Gregory suggests another premises expansion at the site may be considered but only when the new shape of the business is firmly bedded-in and finances allow.

Watch this space. 

TOP TIPS

Spending time on the diligence process is imperative before any investment, according to Gregory, and something he feels the company did well this time. Although he points out the importance of considering limitations and not just capabilities when looking at new kit.

Gregory always involves staff from the start of any machine purchasing process, asking them for advice on the pinch points, bottlenecks and other issues on the production floor. “Then I’ll go to different markets and research what ticks all those boxes or as many as possible.”

Careful budgeting is vital, says Gregory, costing out his purchases and ROI where possible over four to five years. Building good relationships with manufacturers is also key.

Nettl Digiprint Bath and Chippenham

Inspection focus Making the right investment to maximise productivity and sustainability

Business location A shop in Bath and a production facility in Chippenham

Inspection host Ben Gregory, director

Size Staff: 14; Turnover 22/2023 £500,000

Established Nettl partner since 2015, originally founded in 1987

Products and services Signs for trade and retail, digital printing, wide-format, plan prints, litho print, web design, branding & marketing, graphic design

Kit HP Latex R1000 and 800W, two HP Designjet Z9+, two HP T830 multifunction plotters, two Konica Minolta AccurioPress C3070 colour presses and two Bizhub 1100s, Vivid Veloblade Nexus 2516, Vivid Easymount 1650 DH, Vivid Easymount Sign 1400H, Vivid Matrix, various In-house finishing, binding, encapsulation and guillotine kit