35 Issue 251 - February / March 2024 email: news@signlink.co.uk says. “We’re not afraid to invest in new opportunities, machinery, or plant, in fact in our industry you always have to keep up to speed with what’s coming out and what’s available.” Hollywood Monster has made headlines over the past couple of years due to this continued investment with the company having installed an EFI VUTEk 5r 5m LED roll-to-roll printer with support of a £97,000 grant from bodies including the Greenbridge Supply Chain Programme in 2017. This investment was followed up with the purchase of a 3.4m-wide EFI VUTEk FabriVU in-line dye-sublimation digital printer in 2022. Reflecting on the company’s long-standing relationship with EFI for its large-format machinery, McKenzie says: “We’ve worked with EFI for a long time now and they’ve been a very good partner to us and we’ve benefited from that relationship. “From our point of view, we always like to have capacity. A lot of the clients in the sectors we work with don’t always work on the longest lead times, quite the opposite in fact a lot of the time!” To facilitate these needs, Hollywood Monster doubles up on most of its machinery for optimum capacity but also to have backup machines if there are any issues with the kit. This ensures continuity which is important to the company, as well as capacity and service. Whilst the printing side of things is speedy with the company ensuring it has all the necessary hardware to roll graphics out fast, it’s the finishing side of things that can cause the most bottlenecks and due to the nature of the work Hollywood Monster produces, this is something it needed to consider. Again, the company has this covered. “For a lot of people in our industry, we’ve all got similar kit in terms of printing and printing is always getting better and faster and more efficient, but finishing is a bottleneck a lot of the time,” McKenzie explains. To counter this, the company recently invested in a 5m-wide cutting bed as well as a MEEVO silicone edge automated stitching (SEAS) machine. The latter, McKenzie describes as 25 times faster than doing the edging the way the company was before. “This will give us a lot of capacity and efficiency and puts a very good finished edge – far better than you can do by hand using traditional methods,” he says. In addition to investing in machinery, 2023 also saw the company expand its operations with the acquisition of Sygnet Fabrications in May. The acquisition saw the entire Sygnet Group team retain their employment, saving 25 jobs in total. The new addition to the Hollywood Monster portfolio meant that it could expand its offering to trade partners whilst drawing on Sygnet’s 45-year experience in property, construction, events, exhibitions, and retail. Protecting the Planet Alongside producing Monster Impact Graphics and optimising its capacity and efficiency, Hollywood Monster is heavily focused on another area – the environment. Whilst the company traditionally supplies a lot of flat sheet and roll-to-roll products and substrates that the industry expects it to carry, the industry also expects it to carry a wider range of eco alternatives and this demand is something McKenzie says has increased over the past four to five years. “Now a lot of our clients are working with us to improve their sustainability footprint on flat sheet products and on the roll-to-roll products we’ve got an option for every single item. I don’t think there’s a product that we don’t supply an eco option for now,” McKenzie says, adding: “We’re working heavily with clients on that on a day-to-day basis.” So far, the company has alternatives for 80% of its product range and is working towards achieving 100% by 2025. It’s not just substrates that Hollywood Monster is focusing on and the company in fact invests heavily in sustainability in all areas of the business. The company has two recycling partners that it works with to ensure everything that’s used or produced that’s not going to a client is being recycled in some form or other. In early 2023, the company launched its recycling scheme with FESPA-accredited provider, Reconomy which supports its target of becoming fully sustainable by 2025 and reduces its landfill contribution by 80%. Hollywood Monster also encourages its customers in Birmingham to return any used signage it provided to its Tyseley production facility to be added to the bailers and saved from landfill. In addition to this, the company announced at the end of 2023 a new partnership with Clean Air by RESYSTEN. This is a spray that can be applied to signage during production which has been proven to remove dangerous pollutants that are more harmful to our health than CO2 emissions. “In an urban environment it can have a massive impact,” McKenzie explains. One example he gives is on a construction site where you could have hoarding in a city centre site that has Clean Air coating on it. Clean Air can absorb up to 222mg a day of NOx (nitrogen oxides) from just 1m2 of a coated surface. According to RESYSTEN, air pollution costs up to 4,000 lives a year in London alone. COMPANY SPOTLIGHT / HOLLYWOOD MONSTER ▲ [L to R] Jo Worton, Steve Allen, and Laura Huggins
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