Spingold has installed its second Duplo PFI DiCut 300 after recording three of its best trading months in its history at the end of last year.
The Colchester company was able to boost production of playing cards, both traditional decks for poker or bridge, and cards for games and quizzes, during the pandemic thanks to the online sales success of customers and its own online site to sell personalised card designs.
“We had our best ever months in September, October and November,” says managing director Ed Oakes. “We have a couple of couple of customers who sell games through Amazon and they have been very successful.”
The company took delivery of its first PFI machine in 2016 as it expanded its playing cards business. Initially this was an adjunct to commercial sheetfed and large format printing amounting to 30% of sales at the start of last year. At the end of 2020 the playing cards side amounted to more than 80% of sales. Hence the need for additional finishing capacity.
While there are other options in this space, from the likes of Morgana or IFS, Spingold stuck with Duplo. The company has a long association with the supplier, with Duplo equipment including a DC745 multi finisher, and has a library of magnetic dies that can be applied to either machine. There was no reason to change.
The investment in the rotary die cutter was accompanied by installation of a Moll Compact folder gluer to handle the boxes that the sets of cards are dropped into. Earlier it had launched its own PrintFromYourSofa website to for consumers to style the backs and faces of a set of playing cards with their own designs.
These are printed on a brace of Xerox Versant 180s and a Ricoh Pro C7100. These print either on smooth card or linen faced material that has to be sourced from Germany. All the cards are then finished with a slip coating to enable them to be dealt and shuffled easily.
