Joint venture partners in the EU and USA sought to market best-in-class inkjet printers developed by a UK company

Nearly 12 years ago, a team of very experienced inkjet technology developers got together in the East of England and started up a new company. Between them, they had already authored over 100 patents and inventing new products has remained in the team’s DNA. The reason to build a new and small business was to shortcut the difficulties associated with the incumbent industrial inkjet leaders. What is special about this small business is they have taken the best technology components from here and there and added their own. The result is a product range that combines lowest total cost of ownership with easiest installation and integration, and near-zero maintenance. The low cost does not compromise on quality. Their thermal inkjet printers, drop-on-demand, and large character printers offer powerful software implementing leading features from the highest resolution to the largest characters. The product range has solutions for practically all industrial packaging, coding and labelling applications. The team has extensively validated proprietary software and firmware on all the products. The cost savings stem from the robustness and ease of use. The company is successful in the UK and in a number of overseas territories and is now making expansion plans for Europe and the USA. It will welcome enquiries from new distributors but more importantly, is seeking to establish joint ventures with strategic partners in states and countries. The UK company is on the leading edge of technology but its weakness is sales and marketing. They wish to team up with companies in other countries that are serving the packaging and labelling industries and who can invest in market expansion in their home territories. Based on the sales and customer feedback so far, the offering beats both the industry incumbents and the low-cost Asian imitators. There is a distinct opportunity to grab market share whilst genuinely giving better products to customers. The details of the joint ventures may vary. The technology is there so the focus will be on the branding and building of sales channels. The UK company can scale up the supply and technical support, the partners need to assist with anything customer-facing.