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Badgemaster installs a Mimaki UJF-6042 Mk II e digital printer from CMYUK

Ian Bradbeer from Badgemaster with a Mimaki UJF 6042 Mk II e digital printer from CMYUK.
Ian Bradbeer, Managing Director, Badgemaster.

Badgemaster has installed a Mimaki UJF 6042 Mk II e digital printer from CMYUK. This investment brings the total number of Mimaki digital printers at the Nottingham-based name badge specialist printer to 8. 

The new Mimaki was purchased to handle extra capacity for a national roll-out of new bamboo badges for a large UK supermarket chain. It was purchased with the support of a grant received from Nottingham City Council’s D2N2 Growth Hub, awarded to assist in purchasing equipment required to manufacture badges using more sustainable materials. It was one of three machines procured with this money that also included a laser engraver and router. 

“The UJV 6042 Mk 11 e is the perfect size for name badge manufacturing. These are small items so we don’t need a massive bed size.  We get lots of small order quantities as well as large roll outs, so we need a printer that can cope with both large and small volumes. One of our latest orders has been to print over 100, 000 name badges onto sustainable Bamboo, and we needed extra capacity to cope with this,” says Ian Bradbeer, Managing Director, Badgemaster.

Mimaki all the way

Badgemaster is the UK’s leading and largest name badge producer popular for its huge choice of materials, colours, styles, and wearer-friendly fasteners making almost any badge design possible. It produces badges for companies that have thousands of wearers right down to single figures. However, what makes it unique is that it employs a mix of both analogue and digital production technologies. A proud holder of a Royal Warrant, its services over 30,000 customers including Costa Coffee, Waitrose & Partners, Specs Savers, David Lloyd and Morrisons.  Prior to COVID, it was estimated that over  5 million people went to work each day wearing a Badgemaster name badge.

Digital now accounts for over half of the company’s business, a process that was adopted over 12 years ago with the purchase of its first Mimaki printer. Since then, this technology has been central to the company’s digital activity and growth.

“That 50% figure will continue to increase,” says Ian. “It’s been rising every year apart from the Pandemic due to the large volumes of variable data that we process which besides name and job title and logo, now includes pronouns and flags, all of which can efficiently be produced digitally.” 

Badgemaster is loyal to Mimaki and sees no reason to change.  “Once you've picked a manufacturing technology, it's a big decision to change. We are very familiar with Mimaki and know how the ink-sets perform. We first bought into the technology because of its ability to print white, but we’ve stuck with these machines because of their high quality, consistent colour reproduction and reliability,” says Ian.

The company is a relatively new customer to CMYUK.  “We had met Sue Hayward [CMYUK Sales Director, Hardware] at an exhibition and found her to be very thorough and attentive. We trialled CMYUK on a servicing job and the experience was very positive with quick response times, which is why we changed over to them,” says Ian.  

While the Pandemic saw the company’s sales volumes plummet to 25% staff levels are now back on the increase and Badgemaster is recruiting once again as demand for name badges is accelerating at unprecedented levels. With commercial levels rapidly returning to their pre-Pandemic trajectories, forward-looking plans include new equipment and larger production premises.

‘Despite some of the structural changes witnessed on the high street, constant change in the job market ultimately drives demand for name badges’

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