19 March 2024

DELTA DISPLAY INVEST £1.2M IN TWO AGFA PRINT ENGINES

One of the largest printers of POS and display graphics in the UK, The Delta Group, has invested £1.2 million in the purchase of two Agfa wide-format print engines. A Tauro H3300 HS LED has been installed in their Biggin Hill facility and the Tauro H3300 UHS LED, as pictured, at their main 180,000 sq ft site in Waltham Cross. 

The two new machines are Delta’s first move into high-speed, hybrid digital inkjet presses, both come with the ability to print on rigid and flexible media. According to the COO of Delta Display, Martin Shipp, who has been with the business for 25 years and during that time purchased over 100 print devices, the Agfa investment offers the business increased flexibility and agility, a pre-requisite today in satisfying their customer requirements.

“Our relationship with Agfa was historically on Litho plates and more recently after they acquired Inca, with the changeover to Agfa inks on our Inca machine.  Agfa printers have a great engineering heritage, but when they acquired Inca it also enabled them to offer a host of different print solutions at various price points. We have known James Argent from Agfa for many years and have a good relationship with him, so he took some of our team to Antwerp to view the options and carry out testing. We did look at other print suppliers, but when we analysed everything; the cost per Sq Mt, reliability, quality, source of inks and supply chain, the Agfa presses were the right decision for our business.” 

“We’ve been running the machines now for a few months and we’re happy with their ability to improve speed without impacting on the quality. We are also very impressed with the ability of the machine to print white at speed. The Tauro can comfortably print white at 250-400 sq mt per hour, they can print larger format than our silk screen printers, offering 3.3m widths, and they are more cost-effective than our silk screen machines. The new Tauros are certainly delivering on our expectations.” Said Martin.

The first Agfa Tauro HS (High Speed) LED machine was delivered and installed to help with the business’s peak workload in September last year and the latest Agfa Tauro UHS (Ultra High Speed) LED machine was installed in January. At this time the original Tauro HS was decommissioned and moved to the company’s Biggin Hill facility where it replaced the incumbent Inca S40i printer. Both Agfa machines have therefore been up and running in their current facilities for just over a month. 

The Delta Group were established 32 years ago and now employ 680 people. They create engaging visual communications for many of the UK’s leading brands in Retail, Out of Home, Events, Entertainment, Drinks and Health & Beauty. Over 75% of their £100m turnover is from Print for display and they are on a continual improvement and sustainability drive with a plan to achieve net zero status. The group includes Delta Creative, Delta Display and they have acquired subsidiary businesses over the years to add strength in specialist areas. They began trading in Birmingham, moved in 1998 to London E17 and they now have their main site of 180,000 sq ft., in Waltham Cross. Delta Display may have started in silk screen printing, but it now has an arsenal of Litho, silk screen and digital presses and was an early adopter of large format printing.

Interestingly, their plant list no longer includes any dye sublimation printing. Their view is that in their drive to ‘Delta Net Zero’ the process is quite energy-consuming, and they are finding that their customers are more than happy with the results of UV printing onto fabric for their soft POS requirements, especially as the turnaround in production is much quicker.

The Agfa Jeti Tauro H3300 is a UV LED wide-format inkjet printer range for rigid and flexible media. They are heavy-duty printers that easily handle extreme workloads, multiple-shift operation and 24/7 printing. Thanks to the rapid UV LED curing and the low ink usage of their GREENGUARD inks, it also offers ecological benefits that help print businesses lower their carbon footprints. Both the HS and UHS models within Delta offer 6 colours plus white and primer. 

Last word from Martin:

“Our market and customer demand is forever changing and the Agfa Tauro engines are keeping us agile and helping us to flex and deliver. In retail, for example, we can now personalise the POS we send out to stores, it’s no longer a one-size-fits-all solution. Today a POS campaign may require 20 items delivered to each store quickly and all delivered with bespoke sizes and messaging. The Agfa machines are coping beautifully with this type of work.”