Wednesbury Commercial and Car (WCC) has bought a Mimaki JV300-160plus eco-solvent printer/cutter from CMYUK as a keystone of its newly launched vehicle graphics division.
WCC specialises in paintwork, accident repairs and body building and operates from two sites in the West Midlands. Owned and run by two families, it was founded in the mid 1980s, and in the last 12 months, Mike Wright, son of WCC partner Paul and his wife, Ange, (admin, accounts and payroll) joined the business as commercial director to modernise systems and processes whilst focussing on growth.
An increasing demand to incorporate logos and other livery elements has led to WCC bringing full-service vehicle graphics operations in-house, and the company has brought on board seasoned design, print and vehicle wrapping expert Christian Healey to spearhead the project.
“Our priority was investing in high quality, reliable production equipment that would deliver without fail. Christian recommended the Mimaki printers, having previously worked with them and the Rasterlink Rip software, and was particularly impressed by their output quality and robust dependability. He also knew CMYUK of old, and highly regarded their after-sales support,” said Wright.
“The useability of the Mimaki is very simple and it walks you through all the steps itself. I hadn’t used a Mimaki for some time, but coming back to it didn’t seem that much of a challenge,” added Healey. “The quality of the Mimaki printers just stands out. We have chosen the eight-colour configuration because initially we are going to be doing a great deal of colour matching and have customers with existing graphics that will need emulating.”
The Mimaki JV300-160plus runs at up to 105.9m2/hr. It uses Mimaki SS21 ink that is GreenGuard Gold certified – and there’s option to extend the standard inkset with additional orange, light black, white, and metallic inks so users can match up to 95% of Pantone colours.
Summarising the business’ new in-house service, Wright said: “We’re still in the early days of setting up the new department, but customers are very positive as it means as soon as their vehicles come out of paint they don’t have to go to another supplier saving them time - essential for commercial fleet management.
We’re already starting to build a team of installers to work in the new department - freeing Christian up to design and operate the JV300-160plus. Producing vehicle graphics for commercial vehicles naturally suits our business, and we trust the Mimaki’s capabilities to underpin our success.”