1991 - Screen Printing

While we could now offer a very competitive service for one-off signs we were unable to compete on volume printing of multiple orders with bigger sign companies in Dublin who were now screen-printing corrugated plastic signs. There was no choice but to get into the business of screen-printing also. We had mesh screens made in a few different sizes and purchased secondhand screen-printing equipment. With our third employee, a skilled screen-printer, we were able to compete on multiple orders up to a few hundred signs from a hand-printing table. However, our setup was very rudimentary and we did not have the capacity to print very large quantities more suitable for semi-automatic screen-printing. While print costs were low the work was tedious and slow with our primitive equipment and it could take up to one week to finish an order for 3-colour printing. Also, the premises we had rented was most unsuitable for this work. While the set-up was very unsatisfactory, the quality of the printing was good and sufficed to keep most of our customers happy for a short number of years at least.