Sustainability is at the heart of our business – step closer to net zero carbon with us.
As a wide format printer, you can only imagine the amount of PVC material we have the capacity to handle week in and week out – thousands and thousands. Sustainability has been at the heart of our business for years, but has accelerated more recently, ensuring we can provide our customers with non-PVC alternatives that offer the same quality and durability that has become expected of us, whilst still being affordable.
Over the last five years, we have been working hard behind the scenes to find environmentally friendly alternatives to our offering. It’s fair to say we have put hours of time in, researching, sourcing, and testing new and exciting options that have entered the marketplace, before carefully selecting innovative suppliers to partner with.
So far, our efforts have found high quality alternatives for 80% of our product range, and we are working towards achieving this for 100% of our range by 2025.
Why is Sustainability so important?
🌤 Climate change: Awareness is now, more than ever before, at the forefront of people’s mind, it’s a hot topic of conversation, we have Government set targets to meet and more consideration is being taken before choices are being made in everyone’s professional and personal lives.
👣 Carbon footprint: Focussing and understanding this is vital, we can all be shocked by the impact some of the small choices we make in day-to-day life. Whilst we have made steps to decrease our own and increase our teams awareness, we understand the importance of reducing carbon footprint within our customers supply chain.
🏆 Best Practise: We believe it is our job to encourage our customers to make better decisions and passing on the best practise we demonstrate ourselves and ideas we see implemented by our customers should be shared, so we can all take steps in the right direction. Every action has a reaction – make yours a positive input on our planet.
After many years of building our reputation as an environmentally responsible pioneer within the digital wide-format print and signage industry, we are incredibly proud of where we are, but this doesn’t stop the drive we have to go further and do more.
We aim to be fully Sustainable by 2025
Kavalan Range
PVC-free and 100% clean – interested?
Offering the same look, feel and durability as PVC options, it is one of the best alternatives on the market and has surpassed the expectations of many customers who initially trial it, before going on to make it their primary choice for their requirements.
If you were incinerate a single 3.2m roll of Kavalan, you could generate enough energy to power an iPhone for five years – impressive, right? It can even be welded and weighs 50% less, significantly reducing carbon emissions during transport.
What does swapping to greener options really mean, let’s look at the numbers:
✈ Replacing 1,000sqm of front or back lit PVC would save greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to one economy seat from London to NYC.
🐟 Replacing 1,000sqm of mesh PVC would save the lives of 4,000 medium-sized freshwater fish.
🚀 Replacing the entire sales of blockout PVC banners in Europe in 2018, would have saved enough fossil fuel for 75 Apollo missions to the moon and back again.
UFabrik Range
UFabrik is an industry game changer. With an estimated 13 billion plastic bottles disposed of each year, according to Recycle More, what would be better than converting those bottles into signage solutions – we sound crazy, right? In fact, that’s exactly what UFabrik is.
Manufactured from plastic bottles, they go through a full process of being cleaned and sorted before being shredded into flakes, which are then converted into pellets. The pellets are melted into extruded fibres, which are then spun into yarn. The woven yarn forms the unique substrate of the range.
Benefits:
🌳 Fully sustainable
♻ Reusable and recyclable
💚 One piece wall coverings, hanging banners, display frames, canvas prints and eco walls
↔ Available up to 3.1m wide
Long awaited recycling scheme now in place
Launched in early 2023, our recycling scheme with FESPA accredited provider, Reconomy, supports our target of becoming fully sustainable by 2025, reducing our landfill contribution by a whopping 80%.
Our yard is home to two new bailers, which compact all our materials ready to be collected, taken away and sorted. Once this process is complete, it’s then sent off to be recycled into other products, giving it a new lease of life.
We also encourage our customers who are in the Birmingham area to take advantage of this scheme, by returning the used signage we provided, to our Tyseley production facility and we can add it to the bailers and be sure it won’t accidentally end up in landfill.
Greener Machines
In 2022, we welcomed the 3.4m wide EFI VUTEk FabriVU inline dye-sublimination digital printer. It has opened up a range of possibilities, it features water-based inks, allowing us to print on a range of uncoated materials.
Our other eco machine, the EFI VUTEk 5r arrived in 2017. It’s a 5m, LED roll-to-roll printer we invested in with the support of a £97,000 grant, awarded to us by a number of bodies including the Greenbridge Supply Chain Programme. It wouldn’t have been possible without their support and back our desire to invest in the sustainability of our business.
What makes our machines so environmentally friendly:
✅ Printing directly onto uncoated surfaces – increases biodegradability greatly.
✅ Ability to use thinner material – reducing the material used by over 30%.
✅ Carbon emissions are reduced by 80%, running at only 2kw/hr.
✅ LED curing uses 70% less electric compared to a standard UV printer.
Talk to us about your project
Our experts are on hand for advice, technical enquiries and estimates.
