The company is taking on two sign fitters, who will bring Norfolk-based CIM’s headcount up to 18 when they join this month.
The new hires follow the latest round of investments, which saw CIM buy the unit next door to expand its vehicle graphics facilities including a climate-controlled space for up to four vehicles.
With 18 staff the company is now twice the size it was in 2014 when it initated a year-long expansion programme with the aid of a £34,000 grant from the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership. Its first investment was an Agfa Anapurna M1600 that February.
Filling the additional space granted on the original premises, CIM also brought in a raft of machinery to boost its capacity – a Rollsroller 540/170P flatbed applicator, two Roland Soljet Pro 4 XR-640 wide-format printer-cutters and a Seal 62 Pro S laminator, all delivered at the start of the year.
Managing director Mark Baker said: “We are very much a reactive company; our work comes in organically without us having to push the sales. But we needed new staff alongside our new kit because a lot of our jobs were getting backed up – there was a lot of queueing and haggling over who got priority on the machines.
“Our Rollsroller is the most top-end machine of its sort – a good piece of kit rather than something cheap we would have to replace soon. Our Rolands will also help ease that throughput so we are not struggling with any of our work.
“The target is for the company to consistently turn over £1m and to do that comfortably we need to keep up our numbers with quality staff and quality kit.”
Both 1.6m Rolands were brought in to run alongside two machines from Mimaki, aiding output for the production of wallpaper and bespoke wall coverings. The 5.4x1.7m Rollsroller will increase productivity by saving 80% of production time on vinyls and digital prints for signs, exhibition panels and POS.
The Seal laminator will work side-by-side with a 1.6m Easymount machine and each will be dedicated to either gloss or matte jobs to reduce changeover times which result from doing both kinds of job on a single machine.
Altogether, the total investment came to around £60,000. CIM will follow on from it with a move into the digitally-printed wallpaper market, as well as the potential hiring of a new sales person in the field to work proactively. The firm currently turns over just under £1m.
