The owners of Appeal Media have launched a new business, Aroc Compliance, specialising in health and safety and compliance signage. It has hit the ground running during difficult trading conditions, thanks to the ability of its new Ricoh Pro TF6250 UV flatbed printer to print at exceptional speeds direct-to-substrate.
Aroc Compliance was founded by Appeal Media owners Stephen Matthews and Scott McCabe, along with Cora Zonfrillo and Duncan Lowry, in 2019. Since its inception, Aroc Compliance has been busy producing informative sanitiser stations for schools as well as safety signage for large contractors serving a variety of businesses - including the construction, grocery, retail and banking sectors - needing to comply with new COVID-19 regulations.
Having founded Appeal Media in 2008, lifelong friends Stephen Matthews and Scott McCabe had been producing both small-format printed work - typically high-quality marketing material for the hospitality industry - and wide-format graphics and signage for a number of years. As a successful user of the Ricoh Pro C9100 digital press Appeal Media didn't hesitate to choose Ricoh again when investing in a new flatbed printer.
"When it comes to high-quality small-format printing, nothing touches the Ricoh Pro C9100," says Scott McCabe, Owner of Appeal Media and Aroc Compliance. "We were able to convert from offset printing to digital while offering the same matt finish that our customers like.
"That experience gave us confidence that UV flatbed technology from Ricoh would have the engineering capacity we needed for signage, graphics and vehicle livery. We visited the Ricoh UK Customer Experience Centre at Telford to see the Ricoh Pro TF6250 and, having seen other machines on the market, buying it was a no-brainer."
Appeal Media moved to new, much larger premises in Falkirk in late 2019, partly to accommodate the Ricoh Pro TF6250, which can print onto a wide variety of substrates and rigid media up to 11cm thick. By March 2020 it was working at full capacity, just in time to help newly launched Aroc Compliance handle the COVID-19 situation.
"Most of our small-format work is for the hospitality industry so lockdown had a major impact on that side of our business," says Scott. "We had to look at what else we could do. The new Ricoh Pro TF6250 has become the star thanks to its ability to print direct to substrate at a fraction of the time it would take using vinyl."
Scott explains that its previous wide-format printer would take around 18 minutes to print graphics onto vinyl for a standard 8' x 4' sign, which the team would then need to apply to the board, laminate, mount and trim - a 30-minute process in total. Using the new Ricoh Pro TF6250 UV flatbed to print directly to materials such as foamboard, signboard and aluminium, this time has been reduced to just three minutes.
"The time reduction, the fantastic colour gamut, the potential profits - the Ricoh Pro TF6250 is extraordinary," says Scott. "For example, we received an order for 1,000 400mm x 300mm panels which I thought would take all week. We finished in eight hours.
"Investing in the Ricoh Pro TF6250 UV flatbed was absolutely the right thing for us. In terms of the new business, we've made really good headway and the productivity of the new Ricoh device has been well and truly proven. We've completed a huge amount of work at fantastic speeds since March and are looking forward to even more with Aroc."
