What a show indeed! Whilst numbers might have been slightly down on previous years, it does seem that visitors came very much looking to buy. In the case of Sagetech, Britain’s leading manufacturer of vertical panel saws, it was a record order intake for any show ever attended.
More and more sign makers recognise the benefits of in-house cutting, compared to having materials pre-cut, with its inevitable dependence on the quality of the supplier and the hidden overheads of originating and monitoring the requirements for each customer’s order. When those benefits are added to those arising from faster customer response time and the ability to use up offcuts, in combination these benefits underline the competitive advantage of having an in-house cutting facility. As many sign makers now recognise, the Sagetech saws offer many advantages over the guillotine type systems, with greater scope for cutting a wider range of materials, for example, the thicker acrylics, and material such as solid aluminium. Indeed, Sagetech even demonstrated successfully cutting a piece of 10mm thick aluminium at the show, having only shortly before cut a piece of Corex for a fellow exhibitor on the same machine!
As MD Keith Bunker remarked, “in spite of the government’s extensive, and perhaps exaggerated, warnings of doom and gloom at the possibility of Brexit, signmakers were very positive about their future with a solid commitment to longer term investment”.
For Sagetech’s management, what was particularly encouraging, was that sales and interest were spread right the way across the company’s product range, encompassing not just the unique portable ZK units, but right through to the Koolkut KK panel saw range designed for heavy use.
Sagetech Limited, who specialise in vertical panel saws for the smaller business, now offer four ranges of single phase machines, three of which were on show. The Zapkut brand is for lighter duties, starting with the unique ZK8 portable unit priced at £945, which when not in use can be folded up compactly and stored conveniently, say hanging on the wall. The Zapkut ZM range, recently significantly upgraded, is also suitable for cutting sign making materials, but will handle heavy duty and more weighty materials such as MDF or chipboard. The Koolkut brand is for those needing a heavier duty machine, where the KF and KK Koolkut units offer capacities up to 3.1 x 2.1M, so these are easily capable of handling the big acrylic sheets which commonly come in 3 x 2M sheets.
Sagetech thus provides a very comprehensive range of sizes and models, enabling their customers, whose needs range from intermittent cutting to the higher end users (with some even cutting an average of 150 sheets a week), to select the most compact, space-saving solution appropriate to their business.
For more details, contact Sagetech directly by email here or telephone: 0118 970 1950.
