Taking place on 18-19 May at its training and production facility in Shrewsbury, the event will feature a broad range of kit from manufacturers such as Mimaki, Canon, Epson, Klieverik, Kongsberg and Trotec, but the headline act will be EFI’s new Vutek FabriVu 340i+ for the soft signage, exhibition and retail display and textile markets.

The Vutek FabriVu 340i+ replaced the FabriVU 340i, and this week’s event at CMYUK will be its first outing in the UK since it was first unveiled in Asia in October 2021.

The new 3.3m-wide ‘plus’ model offers the same direct-to-substrate and sublimation transfer printing options as the previous iteration, but it has eight Kyocera printheads rather than four, boosting image quality and increasing speeds in point-of-purchase mode by 48%, according to the manufacturer.

CMYUK textiles business manager Brett Platt said: “It does also have a little more speed but key is the improvement in the way it puts colour down. The technology has changed in the way the colours are mapped and the way it lays down ink. It gives a better ink density, effectively.”

Other new features include a redesigned heat plate that regulates temperature uniformity, improved extraction with less outgassing and a new flag ink removal kit allowing the system to manage high ink volumes without touching loaded materials. A new vacuum plate for transfer paper will soon be available for the device as well.

“The modified heat plate gives a much more even heat, which gives a more consistent print quality as does the improved gassing process. To look at the machine it looks almost identical, but underneath it has changed,” added Platt.

The new device costs in the region of £237,000, with a lead time of up to six weeks.

Platt said the first UK install of a Vutek FabriVU 340i+ took place around three weeks ago, through CMYUK, although he couldn’t reveal the buyer.

He said the market was bouncing back well after a difficult time over the past couple of years, blighted by Covid restrictions. “There are lots of customers looking to invest now we are coming out of Covid,” he noted.

“Every customer we speak to in the exhibition or retail sector are all really busy, so much so that they are either looking for more staff or extra machines to increase their capacity. I’d say it’s a really buoyant market at the moment,” he added.