Our Client, a specialist printing company, creates bespoke indoor (publicly accessible) projects and innovative printing solutions to their (mainly) commercial clients. They recognised that to remain competitive and fend off competition from the UK and abroad, they had to develop new printing methods that would be:

• Cleaner, and safer for the public, their customers, staff and installation engineers.
• More environmentally friendly, reducing the need for companies to use landfill disposal, improving the environmental impact of high volume paper usage.

And provide reduced curing/drying times, resulting in faster time-to-delivery of their projects.

– Due to a lack of consistent information in the industry, and the need to use emerging technology our Client realised there were no guarantees that new materials and techniques would work. It was unknown how much effect the new methods would have on the finished quality of their commercial projects. To begin their development program, they needed to:

• Evaluate, source, prepare for installation, and then lease new print equipment.
• Recruit new staff.
• Train new and existing staff prior to trialling the initiative.

Initial trials resulted in a poor representation, significant obstacles, with detrimental consequences, such as stretching and bowing of the printed material. At significant cost, the Directors, Sales and Operations teams evolved and evaluated their new methods. Each trial created different flaws, resulting in alternative papers being used and frequent discussions with their print equipment suppliers. Continual trials by the Production and Finishing staff, resulted in significant wastage and time away from chargeable jobs.

The process was repeated by the teams to check accuracy, and the print profile was changed each time by manually adjustments to achieve optimum results. Eventually our Client achieved their goal and are now recognised as an early adopter of these new methods, which are GREENGUARD compliant for public environmental projects, and ISO 9001 compliant for recycling.

Their innovative attitude, and financial injections from working with us, helps them remain ahead of their UK, and international competition. We were pleased to provide the summaries of their technical and financial reports to justify their R&D tax rebate of £94,250 in July 2017.

Are you claiming an accurate amount of R&D tax relief for innovative work you are undertaking?