Colin Werrett joins Soyang as senior business development manager
Colin Werrett has been appointed as the new senior business development manager for Soyang Europe, following over three decades of experience at Fujifilm
Riverside Printers has purchased a JWEI 2131 digital cutter from CMYUK in response to a major shift in its business mix towards wide-format output
Northamptonshire-based print firm, Riverside Printers, has invested in a new JWEI 2131 digital cutting table from CMYUK as part of the company’s goals to expand its wide-format division.
Based in the busy town-centre location of Corby, Riverside offers a mix of small-format and digital wide-format services. Over the last few years, however, demand for wide-format work has grown rapidly, reshaping the profile of the business and prompting a review of its production capabilities.
Over the past four years, Riverside’s business mix has shifted dramatically. Digital wide-format work now represents around 40% of turnover, up from approximately 20–25% previously, and that figure is expected to rise further.
While its previous Zünd cutting table had served the business well, Riverside felt that it could no longer keep pace with Riverside’s evolving needs. According to the company, the cutter couldn’t handle acrylic in-house, forcing Riverside to outsource this work to a local supplier.
Duncan Raison, director at Riverside Printers, says: “We’d had our existing Zünd cutting table for about six or seven years. It had done its time. It was getting slow, and we were struggling to get parts for it because it had become obsolete. Sooner or later, we were going to need something to replace it.”
The JWEI 2131 enables Riverside to cut and polish acrylic on site, bringing that work back under its own roof and opening up new opportunities in point-of-sale (POS) displays and short-run specialist packaging.
Raison explains: “The JWEI is a lot better at cutting and creasing. If we want to create POS displays or anything with creases in it, it’s much better at that than the old table. We couldn’t really sell the creasing from our old cutter – it just wasn’t good enough. Now, for short runs we can do it on the JWEI with no additional tooling costs and far more efficiency.”
Riverside’s senior team considered a range of systems, highlighting the build quality of the JWEI alongside its OptiScout software and the ease of its machine operation as key reasons for the purchase.
Raison says: “The big factor was CMYUK. The training we’ve had has been amazing, and we’re confident we can get the machine serviced and parts supplied when we need them. That really tipped the balance.”
Staff at Riverside have reportedly adapted quickly to using the new table, with OptiScout’s workflow and automation features haveing integrated seamlessly into the existing production set-up.
“We haven’t had any issues reported,” Raison says, adding: “The consensus is that’s it’s easy to use and fits in well with how we work.”
