Rayleigh-based Thames invested in three MX6100 plastic card personalisation machines from Datacard, as well as four Xerox Nuvera 157 printers to replace some of its existing Xerox portfolio.
Kicked off in December and completed at the start of the summer, the investment period also saw Thames install two Atlantic Zeiser Persomaster banking card personalisers in a bid to become “the most modern, flexible and efficient personalisation and fulfilment bureau in Europe,” according to chief executive Matthew Williams.
He said: “Thames is the card manufacturer and bureau of choice for the UK and European challenger bank and fin-tech sectors, and is the leading supplier of prepaid and debit cards in the market in the UK and abroad.
“Thames provides clients with the most responsive, agile and high-quality service to support their card programmes, and thanks to the support of customers in these financial sectors, as well as in retail markets with gift, loyalty and membership cards, is enjoying spectacular growth.”
The Nuvera 157s continue an ongoing relationship with Xerox and replace two Nuvera 144 sheetfed printers and two 495 continuous-feed printers.
The production printers can print up to 4.7 million images per month – 157 images/min on A4 size – at a resolution of 4,800x600dpi on substrates weighing 52-400gsm.
Process and engineering manager Keith Tyler said: “We took a look at our production floor and decided to improve our workflow by narrowing down on the shorter, more bespoke runs that our customers are increasingly demanding.
“Continuous-feed printers are better suited to big volumes of work that we are not seeing ordered as often anymore. With our four new Nuveras we boast the exact same capacity, but it increases our versatility as we can save time where we would be changing paper rolls. Now we can turn around jobs in hours instead of days.
“We did a little shopping around, but we have been a Xerox house for a long time and this gave us the financial benefit and support of having all our machines tied into a single contract.”
Thames’ Xerox kit line-up also includes a C75 production printer and a Versant 80. The firm will now strive to target more markets, as well as broadening its reach in the fin-tech sector.
Named Thames Card Technology until a rebrand in April, the card manufacturer and mailing operation currently employs circa 200 members of staff on 3,700sqm premises and turns over £19.5m.
