ImagesMagUK_October_2021

www.images-magazine.com OCTOBER 2021 images 29 IS BRAND PROFILE Sabur has expanded its premises from one unit to two High levels of service are why customers choose Sabur, says Dean, pictured here with the Mayor of Barnsley the industry operates, with near-shoring and on-shoring becoming a more appealing option than waiting for ships to arrive from Asia and paying the ever- increasing container costs. Long before the pandemic hit Dean had noticed manufacturing was beginning to move back to the UK, and the past year and a half has seen this trend accelerate. "I've always said, if you're not manufacturing, you're not creating any wealth," he says. "We have customers who manufacture in-house but also bring in goods from offshore – we've seen their workload go up as they are utilising their own machines more. People are definitely starting to make in the UK again." Investment opportunities The super-deduction on tax bills for companies investing in new machinery, introduced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak in the spring Budget earlier this year, has helped boost the numbers purchasing equipment, as have the bounce back loans. "That's helped massively," agrees Dean, "people just dipping into £50,000. 'Oh, I'll buy a couple of machines, I don't have to pay anything back for a year.'" This financial year – Sabur's runs from April to April – Dean expects turnover to increase by 25%. In conjunction with this financial growth, Sabur has expanded its premises. Since 2004, the company has been in a unit on a business park in Barnsley. In 2010, Sabur bought the unit next door. "That was purely to facilitate any growth," explains Dean. "And to ensure that we had total control of the yard. The last thing you want to be moving in next door is a scrap metal merchant or something. We could pick and choose who went into unit three because we were the landlord." In the past few years, however, Sabur has needed more storage space and so has been renting two satellite units on the same estate. Finally, in March this year, the tenant moved out and the team began the process of converting the two units into one large space. It's been "fantastic" from a warehousing point of view, confirms Dean, while a brand-new, open-plan office will be ready for the team at the end of October – a team that has added two new members in the past year: Marc Busby, who has been in the industry for more than 20 years, is a highly experienced and knowledgeable engineer who has worked on Mimaki, Roland and DGI printers, and 17-year- old William Crowcroft, who joined in July this year and is training to be an engineer. "He's proven to be an absolute godsend. He is going to be a very good engineer," says Dean. The new unit also has enough space for the two new equipment lines the company has taken on: the IEcho digital industrial cutting machines, which were added this summer, and the Diferro calenders and heat presses, which Sabur took on late last year. The IEcho machines have cameras mounted on them that feed back the image information to the cutting area, which allows them to have a continuous cutting motion – ideal for the textile industry, confirms Dean. The Diferro heating presses have been added to the company's roster, which includes Sefa and Klieverik, "pretty much because it's much cheaper than the Klieverik". "It's not the same machine," points out Dean. "It's not going to be sat there in 50 years, the same as the Klieveriks are. But it's a very, very good quality machine for the amount of money it costs." Dean cherry-picks all the products himself, and ensures that Sabur has enough in stock to keep customers operating, even over the past year and [l-R] New staff members Marc Busby and William Crowcroft a half when supplies were thin on the ground across the UK. "If you haven't got it, you can't sell it,” he points out. “That's one of the reasons we always have a million metres of sublimation paper in stock." Along with high levels of stock, Dean insists on high levels of service. "I was on an install yesterday and a customer called me. 'Problem on the machine, Dean.' I sent an engineer straight out to him. Twenty minutes later he's texting me saying, 'I can't believe that. Cheers, mate. I appreciate that.' I think that's what keeps us apart from everyone else. "I never, ever say we're the cheapest," he adds. "We won't ever be the cheapest. Because when you buy a product from us, you're actually buying into the brand, into the Sabur brand. We look after our customers. There are only 14 people in the company, and five of them are engineers because I know that if you keep the customer running, you've got customers for life." www.sublimationinks.com