Fast lead times spur digital print investment

Founded 11 years ago by Gareth Vallender and his father Steve Vallender in South Wales, UK-based towel printer Bursali Towels has recently invested in a new DGI digital textile printer. The investment stems from the company’s growing customer base, which has surpassed 3,000 customers. As a business that promises quick lead times, and with demand increasing, Bursali Towels needed to invest in new technology to live up to this promise.

A digitally printed towel from Bursali

The company started producing printed towels in-house around 11 months ago, using a Mimaki TS300P-1800. Bursali has always used digital as the company never felt that screen printing was a viable option for its service. Steve Vallender, sales director, Bursali Towels, says: “We have been keeping an eye on the digital market for some years, but felt the quality has come on sufficiently for us to be really competitive.” Vallender says the final catalyst in the company investing in digital machinery was Brexit.

He says: “With the value of the pound dropping so much it meant we could be much more competitive with all the factories abroad. That put us in the market. We import our plain towels from all round the world, so Brexit has had a negative impact on us there, but we thought let’s be positive about this, let’s see how we can turn this in our favour and it’s coincided with the right technology in the digital printed market, we could now come into the market at an affordable price.” He adds: “It’s still very expensive but we just felt that being able to be more competitive with the factories abroad, it was a good time to move on it.”

Staff from Bursali and Sabur with the DGI machine

However, as demand continued to increase, Bursali needed much higher productivity than the Mimaki machine alone. In January of this year the company therefore attended Printwear & Promotion Live in Birmingham, UK, to find a new digital textile printer that would suit its needs. This is where the company met UK-based digital textile machinery distributor Sabur. Vallender says: “Sabur suggested this DGI printer that it is selling in the UK. It has fitted the bill for us. It’s producing at more than double the sqm/h than the Mimaki [that we have]. By buying this DGI printer, while appreciating that it is a lot more expensive than a Mimaki, it more than trebles our production. It means we can keep pace with the increased demand. We can now keep our promise to our customers that we can deliver within seven days.”
The installation of the DGI machine was completed in March of this year. As well as the speed and increased productivity to be able to meet the rise in volumes of orders, Vallender explains that the quality of the print is ‘phenomenal’.

With Sabur being based in the UK, the installation was made easy. Vallender says: “We wouldn’t have bought from anywhere abroad. We realise that we do need support. Also, these machines are expensive; if something goes wrong we want an engineer with the machine as soon as possible because if that machinery goes down it can be very, very expensive. We need to limit the down time by having a quick and efficient service. This is a very important aspect for us.”

The new installation has helped the business to meet its short lead times and be closer to its customer. Vallender says: “We have been importing printed towels for many years from factories abroad for our UK customers. But the lead times from abroad are anything between 5/6 weeks, up to 16 weeks. Part of what we offer here is that we deliver within seven days of order. That’s a huge plus for us in the UK market. It just makes everything more viable and cost competitive.”

Another plus for the company is that with full control over its digitally printed products, it can better monitor the quality of its prints. Vallender adds: “We can quality control much better from our own UK facility. On a number of occasions over the years we have had thousands of towels turn up from a factory abroad and they’re awful and we are stuck with them and that just causes problems. Now we have total control of our quality and we are printing 1080dpi. Also, we are much closer to the customer. There was a lot of positives to get us to make the move, to take the plunge.”

Having print production much closer to the customer has been particularly helpful when it comes to Bursali’s promotional product market. The company has a lot of promotional companies as customers and Vallender says that orders for this type of customer often require a very fast turnaround. “When customers decide to order customised promotional beach towels, they often need them in 2-3 weeks’ time. Previously that would be impossible because they need to be brought from abroad but now we can supply them. It gives us quite an edge in the market in a lot of different areas.”

As well as finding success in the UK market, Bursali also has a lot of customers in the rest of Europe and in Africa. “We do a lot for the African market, we’ve just had a big order go out to a beautiful hotel resort in Abuja, Nigeria. The company is growing y-o-y and we are finding things very buoyant. We seem to be doing quite well. It has put us in a situation where we can make, what is to us, a huge investment on this digital printing equipment,” says Vallender.

Traditionally, towels have been difficult to print on, but Bursali has its towels specially made to alleviate this. “The overall construction of the towels is 70% cotton, 30% polyester microfibre. It’s double-faced so that the top of the towel that we print on is 100% microfibre and the reverse of the towel is cotton. By having the polyester microfibre as the face it means we can do the dye-sublimation printing and it comes out like a photograph, there’s such a high quality on it. I’ve been in the industry 40 years and it’s the best quality I’ve seen on a printed towel.”

For more information visit www.bursali.co.uk 

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