Purchased from supplier CMYUK in October, the new table now cuts all of Symbiosis’ printed roll material, and has allowed the business to bring its 3D lettering production in-house.

The firm had previously been cutting its printed rolls by hand: cutting a 100-metre roll had been a six-hour process - now it takes just 40 minutes.

Nigel Targett, managing director of Symbiosis, said: “Before the installation of the Kongsberg, we were pulling printed roll material across a 1.4m-wide table and cutting graphics manually, rolling them up, and then pulling the material across the table again to cut the next piece.

“Compared to cutting by hand, I would say we’re now about 97% quicker.”

Targett co-founded Symbiosis in 2003 with the firm’s operations director, Vanessa Okell, who said bringing the 3D lettering in-house had allowed the firm to play with its product offering.

She said: “It’s fabulous. It’s widened our range, particularly of our 3D letters - before, we were being held back by what our suppliers could create, and the timeframe they could create it in.

“Now, we can experiment with new styles, new sizes, and really the turnaround time is fantastic.”

Symbiosis runs a Mimaki UJV55-320 roll-to-roll UV LED press, also purchased from CMYUK, alongside a smaller Mimaki and HP flatbed, employing 18 permanent staff from its London base.

Over its 20 years of operation, the business has been part of the migration to soft signage from solid board: for the first ten, it would buy in all of its print to apply onto rigid materials like Dibond and Foamex.

In the following years, however, soft signage’s ease of use became clear and it moved to flexible materials, purchasing its UJV55 in 2019.

Targett said: “Textiles promised a seamless finish. It was a natural evolution in the way that nobody today really wants a 43-inch TV, they all want 65-inch screens or large panels for their walls.”