Supplied by Terry Cooper Services (TCS) and installed last month, the Yawa machine will be run alongside a Heidelberg cylinder set up for foiling that was bought two years ago.
“Foiling demand had got to such a level that we decided to address it for two reasons – to meet the demands of our existing customers and to enable us to grow,” said Ultra joint owner and director Gary Smith, who established the Rugby-based company in 2001 alongside Tony Shaw and Richard Pettifer.
“We were pretty much up to capacity within three months with our first foiler and it was difficult to grow and go after new lamination and spot UV business without being able to take on more foiling because customers like to see us as a one-stop shop.
“By doubling our capacity, the Yawa relieves pressure with existing customers but also allows us to jump after new business and upsell the other services that we currently offer.
“It has impacted straight away because there’s work that we’ve had on site since it was installed that we would have never cleared within the dates that were required with one machine.
“We’ve got a job coming up in September that’s going to more or less take one machine out for most of the month, so it’s given us the ability to dedicate one machine to that and carry out other foiling work on the other machine.”
The business first heard about the Yawa from a trade contact and looked at a similar machine at Ipex late last year. Through another contact it met up with TCS and viewed a machine in London to the same specification as the one it bought.
The kit offers foil stamping, embossing and die-cutting and features four independent heat zones, two cross-pull foil rewind units and can create 2900 impressions per hour using 110 tonnes of pressure. It also incorporates a missed-sheet detector, an automatic feeder, colour touchscreen control and air-blast system for separating foil from stock.
“Ultra’s niche is small to medium sized jobs, producing high quality decorative finishes for the commercial print industry,” said joint owner and director Shaw.
“The Yawa will allow us to maintain quality and improve turnaround at the same time as increasing capacity. Our expectations are that we will grow overall sales by 20% over the next two years.”
Ultra Finishing has eight staff working at two units and turns over £750,000. Serving customers within a 50-mile radius, the company originally offered encapsulation but has gradually expanded its services to include spot UV, aqueous and thermal lamination.
