Helen Beresford-Jay of CMYUK joined us at The Print Show to talk through the company’s new self-adhesives, a PVC-free range made from sugarcane and its own banner materials
CMYUK had the biggest stand ever seen at The Print Show. That’s a lot of products to get through, so we asked group product marketing manager Helen to talk us through the broad range of media on show.
Helen has only been with the company for four months, but as she says in the video, she has spent her whole career in print. “Before CMYUK I was at Contra Vision for thirteen years, and before that I worked at a local family printer for seven years. So I’ve been in the industry for twenty-plus years.”
A tidier range for printers
The main news on the stand was a refreshed signs and graphics materials collection. CMYUK had sent out a press release a few weeks earlier and launched the range properly at the show. “We looked at our existing portfolio. We had lots of self-adhesives and banner materials, and we’ve given it a refresh. Some of those are still around, but we now have a new range from a company in Portugal called Digidelta,” Helen explains.
That new range is Digidelta’s Decal collection of monomeric and polymeric self-adhesives, with matching overlaminates. CMYUK did not take the whole range. It picked out the products it thought its customers would use. “They have quite a vast portfolio, so we looked at what sign makers, installers and printers need and picked the key products. We’re making it so printers don’t have loads of SKUs.”
The selection covers permanent, removable, high tack, greyback and block out options. All of them have a wrinkle-free liner. Helen calls it a pick and mix, where printers start from the job and choose the material to suit it.
Two of the products are aimed at easier installation. One is a dot matrix film that Helen sees as a good fit for retail campaigns, where graphics go out to stores and are put up by staff. The other is a bubble-free film with air release channels in the liner. “There’s nothing worse than a bubble in your self-adhesive. You don’t want to be pricking it with your blade to get it out, whereas this has got the channels so you can get it out that way.”
PVC free and made from sugarcane
CMYUK also took on Digidelta’s Biond range, which is PVC-free and made from sugarcane. “It’s early days for us with these products. We have two self-adhesives, removable and permanent, and two matching overlaminates. Digidelta do have more in the range, but we’re experimenting with these four key products at the moment,” she adds.
Alongside the Digidelta products, CMYUK launched its own PVC banner range for everyday work. Helen describes it as covering anything from a barrier graphic at a football ground to a full building wrap. The company’s textile range was on show too, and the stand itself was built from it, with backlit sections lit from behind.
The real test for PVC-free media is whether it can do what PVC does at a price customers will accept. Helen says CMYUK wants to offer both kinds of material and let the customer choose. Helen concludes, “We have options for sustainable products, and we have options for everyday products. No matter what people’s budgets or specifications are, we’ve got something that will cover everything.”