Continued modernisation The investment in the VUTEk Q3r is an exercise in production modernisation, enabling the company to meet market demand by significantly increasing throughput, improving efficiency, and eradicating production bottlenecks. "Years ago, it was just plain curtains, but everyone wants livery on their curtainsiders and not just the back doors now. A good 90% of my production is livery on curtainsiders. Nothing plain really goes out the door now," says Mark Wayman, General Manager, Sapphire Graphics. Prior to the installation of the new printer, Sapphire Curtains & Graphics utilised traditional manual signwriting practices alongside digital solvent printing produced with Mimaki solvent technology purchased some years back. While quality was high, production was relatively slow. "With the new VUTEk printer, we'll be looking at printing 14 pairs of truck curtains per day, whereas with our old solvent machine, we'd be doing about two and we'd still need an additional 24 hours of de-gassing time," says Mark.