The Printweek Awards-winning company, which prints litho, digital and wide-format, updated its wide-format roster in January 2024 with a new Canon Colorado M3W 1.6m roll-to-roll printer and Arizona 1360 GTF 1.26x2.5m flatbed taking over from an older Arizona.
The new printers have been supported with new finishing equipment from Vivid. Installing a Veloblade Volta 1612 and Matrix Metallic 370MP foiler in June, Statex has already placed an order for a custom 1.6x1.2m Veloblade Nexus, due to arrive in late August.
With the Volta cutting 10mm deep and the Nexus 25mm deep, the firm is well covered for its cutting needs.
“We’ve got the best of both worlds, really, and it’ll help us be flexible,” explained Peter Smith, managing director and co-owner of Statex.
He told Printweek that the new wide-format arrangement had been a real boon for the business, with the cutters complementing the new Colorado neatly.
“It’s completely revitalised our large-format setup,” he said.
“We had intended to just buy a new Arizona – [the old machine] was ready to be replaced – but ended up coming back with a Colorado as well, and it’s been fantastic.
“We’re able to do so much now that we couldn’t do before, and the speed of it, the quality, is absolutely off the scale. And it allows us to be far more automated from the front-end as well, it takes a lot of manual handling out of our operations.”
Statex’s wide-format department tackles a wide range of jobs, from banners, pictures, to special effects prints like lenticular or tactile printing, the latter having been opened up by the new Canon printers’ layering software.
The firm’s investment in wide-format kit is just part of a wide refreshment strategy that has seen the company upgrade its Tharstern MIS, improve its premises, boost its offering to staff through pay and development, buy new IT equipment, and an MBO B30-6R70 folding machine since Statex’s management team completed a management buyout.
The 30-year business was bought out by Smith, production director Paul Treanor and finance and HR director Ian Bates in 2022.
Next on the list are digital printers, with Statex looking to create a “completely new” mailing department, centred around a Quadient DS-700IQ folder-inserter installed in May.
“We essentially have a complete mail facility in-house now, which is fabulous,” Smith said; printing is currently done on Ricoh 9210, 9110 and Xerox Versant machines, some of which will be replaced in September.
Smith said the further investment would be “significant” for digital and online finishing equipment.
He added: “Since we’ve taken over, we’ve completely changed how the business works. The whole ethos has changed, and those barriers [between staff and management] have been knocked down. We’ve got five different sales strategies going on at the minute, and we’re doing enormous amounts of research and development – it’s quite exciting at the moment.”
Statex employs 49, turning over £5.5m last year.
