The Rayleigh, Essex-based firm, which has around 200 staff and a turnover of £18m, took delivery of the two machines, which cost "around several hundred thousand pounds" according to managing director Paul Underwood, last month.
“The exponential growth of the gift and loyalty sectors, the increasing number of banking customers in the developing world and EMV migration in the US is seeing demand for our services grow and these purchases maximise our ability to respond,” said Underwood.
The Atlantic Zeiser Cardline Versa machine, which features a high-speed drop-on-demand card personalisation system, has increased the firm’s gift, loyalty and membership card production capacity by an additional 50%.
It streamlines the card production process, enabling the data to be encoded and printed onto the card, scratch labels to be attached and camera-automated verification to happen in-line, on a single machine.
The Kurz C7000 High-Speed Hologram and Foil Blocking System will enable the firm to improve services for the gift, loyalty and banking markets by producing card designs with different coloured foil finishes and background images which bleed off the edge of the card, preventing a white-rimmed finish.
The machine will support fraud prevention by printing the unique holograms that appear on the back of credit and debit cards.
“Because we are very busy, these two machines have had a big impact already. We’ve been able to increase our capacity in those areas and offer our clients a level of innovation that we weren’t able to offer before we had the Kurz machine,” said Underwood.
TCT currently produces around 175m plastic cards a year including retail customer loyalty and gift cards, 'smart' chip cards and banking sector cards such as Visa and Mastercard.
The cards are produced at the company’s 3,700sqm facility on a range of machinery including bespoke Mitsubushi, Oasys and Mühlbauer card manufacturing equipment and Atlantic Zeiser and NBS personalisation equipment.
The cards are then printed using litho and screen printing techniques on its Mitsubishi six-colour and Akiyama four colour-presses.
Following lamination and punching they are then either delivered direct to the customer or combined with mailings printed on TCT’s continuous and sheetfed laser printers and prepared for sending.
The firm secured growth funding of £3.2m from Business Growth Fund (BGF) in December.
“Since the deal was completed in December last year, we have had a great deal of support from BGF. It’s always on the other end of the phone if I have a query and we’ve also used its expertise to source several levels of personnel that we have employed here over the last few months,” said Underwood.
In March the company signed a major contract with Ghana Commercial Bank, which has seen it become the sole supplier for the production, personalisation and distribution of 1m EMV chip payment cards for the bank.
“Our immediate plans going forward will be to expand the business with a real focus on the export marketplace. We have recruited a new export sales manager within the last couple of weeks and we are undergoing several conversations with people to expand the business outside the UK,” said Underwood.
