Lancashire card specialist in £300k technical investment
Europe’s largest capacity card manufacturer, Leyland-based Nitecrest, have invested more than £300,000 in new machine technology, enhancing the company’s special finishes range.
The new machine, claimed to be one of the first in the UK card industry, changes the way special finishes are added to gift and loyalty cards.
The new technology alleviates alignment issues when overprinting screen print finishes, such as high gloss varnish on logos and text.
Commonly, plastic card printers experience distortion when laminating sheets which can cause registration issues when applying popular metallic finishes such as gold and silver.
Nitecrest’s new high precision printing techniques eliminates the need to guillotine distorted edges by printing directly on to heat laminated sheets, providing market-leading, high-quality finishes.
Chief executive Ronnie Hart said: “Special effects on cards are a growing requirement in the gift card industry.
“We are finding that, previously, retailers have been disappointed with the restraints of screen printing the special effects on to their gift cards.
“We wanted to change that and with this new technology from SAKURAI, using cameras and auto-alignment on a screen press, we can offer so much more to our clients or any retailers who want their cards to stand out from the crowd when on display.
“Another added bonus for clients is that we are once again improving our already synonymously fast lead-times.
“This machine operates at nearly double the speed of our two other screen presses, so it is a massive increase to our daily capacity.
“Plus, the latest Natgraph drying system we installed on the machine allows instant drying so we do not need to rack the card sheets for further drying,” Mr Hart added.
Nitecrest has more than 25 years’ experience in the plastic card industry, manufacturing cards for gift, loyalty and banking in the UK and exporting to in excess of 140 countries.
It can produce more than five million cards each day, and is a Queen’s Award for International Trade winner.
