A LANARKSHIRE printing firm which is diversifying into making machines is targeting up to £10 million of revenues over the next three years through sales of its Behemoth creation, after securing £850,000 of funding from Clydesdale Bank.
Newhouse-based DPi Print, run by Geoff Hall, has set up a subsidiary called DPI-Technologies as it pursues its prototyping and building of the Behemoths, which it believes will “generate considerable interest from printing businesses across the globe”.
DPi Print employs 15 people and in 2010 achieved record annual turnover of £1 million.
It plans, through DPI-Technologies, to recruit about 10 engineering staff as it aims to fulfil its ambitions for the Behemoth.
DPi Print has been helped in its diversification plans by economic development agency Scottish Enterprise (SE).
It has received support from taxpayer-funded Scottish Development International, a joint venture between SE and the Scottish Government, in targeting new overseas markets and had its manufacturing operations reviewed by the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service.
A spokeswoman for DPi Print, which provides commercial printing services to customers including BMW, Tennent’s, House of Fraser, the Scottish Rugby Union, Tesco, Ikea, and has done work for the T in the Park music festival, said the company decided to create the new machine because it knew what it wanted but such a device was not on the market.
She added DPI-Technologies would start recruiting the first of about 10 engineers just before Christmas.
The Behemoth, a water-based “grand format” printer, which DPi says will be “one of the largest and fastest commercial printing machines available on the market”, will be launched at a European trade show early next year. DPi Print said each machine would have a market value of about £500,000.
Clydesdale Bank has provided support to DPi Print through the Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) lending initiative – a scheme launched by the previous Labour Government at Westminster in January 2009 as part of its “Real Help for Business” campaign.
The EFG facilitates additional bank lending to viable small and medium-sized enterprises as a tailored alternative to standard commercial loans.
Martin Sharman, DPi Print’s account manager at Scottish Enterprise, said: “DPI-Technologies is exactly the kind of innovative, forward-thinking company we want to work with and, by supporting ambitious companies like this, we can ensure that they have the tools they need to realise their full potential and achieve their growth plans, creating more jobs in Scotland and ultimately boosting the Scottish economy.”
Neil Berry, business development partner at Clydesdale’s Glasgow financial solutions centre, said: “DPi Print is an excellent example of a Scottish business with big ambitions to grow internationally.
“The production of the Behemoth will bring a host of benefits to the central belt of Scotland – most notably in the form of economic development of the region through exporting this state-of-the-art product to overseas markets. Clydesdale Bank is delighted to support this quality management team as it embarks on this exciting new journey.”
Mr Hall said: “We are extremely excited about developing a prototype of the Behemoth – there is a great deal of demand for this type of large format, environmentally sustainable printing device across the world, and this will be a cutting-edge piece of technology.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article