The company, which employs 90 staff, opened its London office at the Metal Box Factory, near Waterloo, last month. Its main headquarters and print production facility is in St Neots, Cambridgeshire.
Macro Art commercial director Michael Green told PrintWeek: “It’s a project management office. We do a lot of white-label work for big brands and one of the things our customers have asked us to do is to get closer to them. So it’s a response to those requests and it also makes sense for us to be where the business is.
“We’re not currently producing in London but that’s open to possible change. There are a number of venues that we do direct work for in central London and if clients want to see somebody it’s much easier to send somebody there than to get them to come to St Neots.”
The firm’s projects have included work for Farnborough and Paris air shows as well as producing flooring for the main arena in a £140,000 contract for the Paralympics at London 2012. It also produces work for the retail, automotive and exhibition sectors.
Three staff, including one new hire who will focus on business strategy, will be based at the London office permanently and Green hopes this number will expand.
The new office opening follows the company's summer installation of the first eight-colour 3.2m Durst Rhotex 322 to be delivered into the UK. Installed at Macro Art’s St Neots site, the machine joins an existing 5m Durst Rho 512R UV machine as well as EFI, HP, Mimaki and Monti Antonio printers.
“The Durst has enabled us to produce dye-sublimation at very good quality at good production speeds. Having eight colours gives us a much wider colour gamut and enables us to hit really good reds, oranges and violets,” said Green.
“We were one of the first people to get into dye-sub in a big way in the UK and one of our Mimaki machines was starting to limp a little bit so we knew we had to invest."
He added: “We looked at a number of options but kind of knew we were going to get a Durst as we were so happy with the five-metre UV. We know where we are with Durst and what the quality is – and the quality on the new machine is superb.”
In 2014 the company was sold via a management buy-out to a team including Green, managing director James Jennings and sales director Matthew Guise. Since taking over Green said the team have grown the firm’s turnover from £6.5m to £9m, with £10m projected for this financial year.
