The company has already produced 300 feather flags, over 1,500m worth of banners, plus stage wraps, sponsor branding and barrier jackets for the almost 300 events being held over the next few months.
The print has all been produced on Your Print Partner’s stable of Mimaki direct to textile printers, mostly on either Berger knitted polyester fabric or Berger Airmesh material, suitable for wind speeds of up to 40mph.
“We used to do some of the print on PVC but we’ve moved away from that to print everything for Race for Life on fabrics now,” said managing director of Your Print Partner Stuart Maclaren, who reported that the company also provided some print for last year’s events.
“So Cancer Research can wash them then reuse them at multiple events. That’s much more environmentally friendly,” he said.
“Each print will be used maybe 30 or 40 times throughout the year and then saved for the next year. Race for Life events are split between 45 event managers covering different regions. They’ll use the print for one city centre launch in that region then use it for several other launches or race events after that.”
Maclaren added: “The materials are so reusable that we wouldn’t be printing so much more this year if it wasn’t for Race for Life expanding in size.”
Your Print Partner has had to ramp up production for this job, reported Maclaren, taking on two extra hand finishers.
“With a job of this size that’s a lot of printing, because all feather flags are double sided, so it’s 600 pieces really,” he said. “Those have to be cut out and sewn by hand, and we did 3,100 eyelets on banners this year which is also a manual process.”
A key challenge was colour matching to get sponsors’ brand colours and that ubiquitous Race for Life pink just right.
“Even a slight temperature change in the machines can make them look slightly different,” said Maclaren. “So we printed most runs all at the same time so everything stayed as consistent as physically possible.”
Race for Life events run across the UK from 4 May to September, and include 5km and 10km runs, walks and ‘Pretty Muddy’ obstacle runs. The events raise over £50m each year for Cancer Research UK. Visit raceforlife.org to find out more.
