HP certification verifies certain substrates that are suitable for use with HP Latex inks. Spandex said this provides signmakers and printers with peace of mind when looking for new compatible materials.

The certified materials include ImagePerfect 2503 Plus, 2503PA Plus, 2504, 2506, 2506PA, 2553, 2553PA, 2554, 2556 and 2556PA.

When combined with HP Latex inks the certified substrates are said to be scratch resistant and suitable for indoor and outdoor applications.

Spandex UK category manager Steve Jacques told PrintWeek: “We’ve been working in the background on this with HP and their profiling agent for some months. There’s a big market focus at the moment on HP Latex printers, specifically because of the whole environmental, solvent-free considerations.

“The quality of ImagePerfect generally, but also the fact that it has some very different solutions within the broader range, is something that HP very much like the idea of, so this has been driven by both HP and Spandex to create some added value to both the hardware and consumable elements.

“We’re not just talking about material compatibility with this range of HP Latex printers but that the materials and the profiling agent are tuned together to give the optimum performance so it promotes both HP as a provider of print solutions and Spandex as a provider of material solutions.”

He added: “We chose these 10 products because they’re day-to-day commodity products and workhorses but we are also very interested to look at some of the more specialised products which would again help to promote that hardware and materials relationship. It’s very much a continuing relationship which will develop with more materials coming through.”

Spandex, which two months ago added two new ImagePerfect films to its ETU (Easy to Use) range of digital self-adhesive films, also recently launched an online store and customer portal and added new products for vehicle wrap and interior decoration applications from Avery Dennison, 3M and Orafol to its portfolio.