Edale reports successful open house and expo

UK press manufacturer Edale held its first open house and exhibition at its premises in Hampshire on February 8.

The local Mayor and Mayoress of Fareham cut the ribbon to officially open Edale’s second unit and to mark the start of the exhibition. There were a large number of visitors who spilled in and began browsing the various table tops and catching up with industry friends, suppliers and customers. 

Visitors saw demonstrations of the Edale FL-350 modular flexo press, which was launched at Labelexpo Europe 2011, and a Gamma scratch card line – an 8-color machine which has been sold to an overseas customer for the production of pre-paid telephone scratch cards. Other machines available to view were three Beta modular flexo presses and the Alpha compact flexo press.

The event hosted 20 suppliers as exhibitors, with a number of the companies also giving presentations. The attendees were:  Alphasonics, API Foil, Asahi Photoproducts, Creation Reprographics, Cheshire Anilox Technology, Daco Solutions, Domino, EskoArtwork, Fiberweb, GEW, Herma, JM Heaford, IST, Lake Image Systems, Rotometrics, Tesa Tapes, Vetaphone, Xeric Web Drying Systems and Zeller & Gmelin. The BPIF and EFIA also had a presence at the event with John Bambery, chairman of the BPIF, kicking off the day’s presentations.

Jeremy Westcott, Edale’s sales and marketing director, said: ‘For a first event, this really exceeded our expectations; we had over 100 people attend the day made up of customers, potential customers, suppliers and press. We are thrilled with the initial success the open house seems to have brought.

‘It was a day to open the doors of Edale and show people how Edale work, what we have managed to achieve with the opening of the second unit, and also the wide range of products that we can offer. It was great to be able to have our suppliers and also our worldwide network of agents attending a day like this.’

The open house made up one day of Edale’s distributors training schedule, giving them the chance to increase knowledge on not only Edale products but also those of their suppliers. The second day of their training saw the sales and marketing team give the distributors a talk on Edale’s objectives for 2012, as well as a technical presentation on the FL-350 from senior designer Glen Whittington, tied in with hands-on print training on the FL-350 machine in the showroom, which saw the distributors competing against each other on the ‘Pit Stop Color Change Challenge’.

Pictured: The Mayor and Mayoress of Fareham cut the ribbon to officially open Unit 2, alongside Edale’s managing director James Boughton

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