The £2.5m company, which operates from a leased 604sqm unit in Cookham, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, completed the acquisition of Mustard Solutions, for an undisclosed sum, shortly before Christmas.
Mustard, which had a turnover of around £500,000, was based a few miles away, close to Maidenhead town centre.
All four of Mustard’s staff, as well as its machinery and operations, have moved over to join Oasis’ 23 staff, with former Mustard managing director Andy Hall now heading up the new Oasis exhibition graphics team.
Oasis Graphic Co managing director Simon Osborne said: “I’ve known Andy for quite a long time and he’d already been buying wide-format print from us.
“He was at a bit of a crossroads as the lease on his building was up at the end of November and he was getting to the stage where he would have had to go to the next level of investment in order to be able to service his clients with wide-format printing.”
He added: “We initially came up with the idea that he would work from home and buy graphics from us to sell on, but then we thought we could take the company over – because it had quite a few clients – and bring their guys in to work with us.”
Equipment acquired from Mustard Solutions includes cutting machinery and a Mimaki JV33. This has joined Oasis’ existing kit, which includes a 3.2m-wide EFI Vutek GS3250, two additional Mimaki JV33s, an HP Designjet Z6200 and Zünd cutting equipment.
Additionally, towards the end of last year the firm invested in a new Fujifilm Acuity Advance Select HS 5226 printer, which has increased the variety of substrates it is able print on and enabled it to keep more work in-house.
The device has already been tested on projects that include printing on materials including a door and golf balls.
“Bringing the Mustard team on board has been a really exciting development for us. Oasis’ roots are embedded firmly in exhibition graphics and this merger has further strengthened our offer to clients,” said Osborne.
“Mustard mainly served exhibition clients whereas we were split between exhibition, events, retail and office environments.
“Andy had quite a lot of work at some big shows, such as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and others in Las Vegas and Amsterdam, so the acquisition helps us to push on some of these bigger shows.”
Over the next year or two the company hopes to expand its services further to add dye-sublimation printing, an area of work it currently outsources.
“We’re hoping to bolt Mustard Solutions’ turnover straight onto ours so with actual growth as well we should push past £3m,” said Osborne.
“As we grow we’ll take on more people and equipment; we’re always looking to invest.”
Hall added: “This has been an exciting decision for Mustard and we really do believe that our clients will reap the benefits. We are still the same people looking after client projects and we trust that all our clients will be as enthused as we are about this new venture.”
