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EMERY - CAPILLEX
Founded in 1840, Emery Colours is based in Stoke-on-Trent and was originally established as a manufacturer of colours and enamels for the production of porcelain, china, earthenware and glass. More recently, the company merged with Capper Rataud, enabling it to extend its services to include high volume transfer printing. Today, the company’s customers include many of the world’s major designers and suppliers of high quality bone and fine china and tableware. The company’s Print Manager, Brian Ward, explains that, 'Over the years, we have built a reputation for exceptionally high levels of quality; for example, we regularly print transfers in up to 12 colours and at a resolution beyond the scope of most screenprinting. Perhaps as importantly, our business is continually changing to reflect the needs of our customers; as a result, we have had to steadily reduced our lead times to remain competitive. The challenge has been to maintain our quality standards while cutting the time required for design, proofing and production.' The materials and production equipment used by Emery Colours play a vital role in helping the company balance the demand for high quality with rapid throughput. In particular, Emery Colours has standardised on products from a small number of key suppliers, including Autotype for capillary photostencil films and Sericol for other screen making materials. Brian Ward points out that Emery Colours 'normally use Capillex 18 photostencil film as it provides excellent levels of definition and enables us to reproduce extremely delicate images with fine lines. For example, we can achieve high mesh counts without encountering the problems normally associated with dot gain or fill, even when there is a low tonal range, in often complex or extremely detailed patterns that include floral and botanical designs, animals and birds.' Capillex has been developed to provide a wide processing latitude and consistent results, while being easy to handle and process. These are important benefits for Emery Colours as they help to ensure that screens can be produced quickly and simply and minimise the risk of screens having to be scrapped due to handling or processing errors. The ceramic inks used by Emery Colours are extremely aggressive and eventually cause the screen materials to degrade. Typically, screens last for over 10,000 impressions before they need to be replaced which, as Brian Ward explains, 'is good considering the nature of the inks, but places greater demands on the performance of both the screen materials and the production processes to ensure We have previously tried competing products but found that they did not offer the same degree of quality and consistency in high volume transfer printing that we can achieve using the combination of Autotype Capillex film and Sericol screen materials.'
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