Meshtex started out in 1972, working within the screen printing industry (for both textiles and wallpaper) offering colour separation and screen engraving to textile and wallpaper industry.
The rotary screen printing industry was vibrant at the time, and Meshtex became and have remained, one of the market leaders.
Throughout the 90s and 00s, though, two things began to cause the screen printing market to deteriorate. Overseas competition within the textiles industry, and digital printing.
The latter being something that the trade was concerned about since the mid 90s, but has only really began to take hold commercially within the past few years.
Thanks mainly to the unwavering support of the owners of this family business, Meshtex have survived some incredibly lean and difficult years, while the majority of our competitors haven’t been so fortunate.
However, we wouldn’t have been able to survive in the long-term without diversification, and since major competitor of traditional printing is digital printing, the most obvious solution was to diversify by moving into digital printing.
Please Note – any reference to lead times are a correct estimate at the time the article was published. Lead times are always estimated and never guaranteed, and for our current estimated lead times see: lead times & deadlines.
This isn’t actually much of a diversification at all, it’s really a natural progression. It’s a change in output method, and a slight development of the business model, however it required little change to our core experience, skills and abilities as a company.
In other words, what we have always done is to use our skills and abilities to transform the designers art work from a file to a finished product, albeit with the actual printing being done by our clients rather than in-house.
What’s changed is that the output is digital rather than screen, and the business model is now also direct to designer/brand vs purely wholesale to the screen printer.
We began with one wide format digital printing, using pigment inks, for printing cottons and linens. Within the first twelve months, our workload reached the stage that another printer was required, therefore we installed an identical printer to double our production capacity.
We chose the pigment printing process as it’s the most environmentally friendly process, and it has other major advantages over the other main digital fabric printing method known as reactive printing.
The inks are all water based, and the printed fabric simply requires fixing with heat, which we do with a rotary heat press.
With reactive printing there is a chemical pre-treatment applied prior to printing, and steaming & washing is required after printing, so it’s not as clean and as eco friendly a process as printing with pigment inks.
The other major benefits of pigment printing are that as well as being on par with reactive printing for wash fastness and rub fastness, pigment inks are far superior for UV fastness, often making this process the choice for home furnishings.
For example, curtains printed with our pigment process will still be just as vibrant after years of use, while reactive printed curtain fabrics fade more noticeably over time.
The quality and range of polyester fabrics now available to us has improved immensely within the past year or so, especially when it comes to vegan fabrics, and fabrics made from recycled plastics.
The demand for such fabrics have also been growing, and as a result we have recently installed a new wide format dye sublimation printer, to enable us to print a wide range of synthetic fabrics on the roll.
The new HP Stitch printer was installed in early November 2019, and now we’re just waiting for our new wide format rotary press to be installed (currently being made for us in Italy). Once this is installed, we will hit the ground running offering a wide range of digitally printed polyester fabrics by the metre.
In addition to digital textile printing, we also now offer digital wallpaper printing, via our HP Latex wallpaper printing machine, offering a range of high quality non-vinyl wallpapers on the roll, and also wall murals.
Again, the wallpaper industry is one that we have been involved in for decades, our knowledge and experience is second to none, the only change is in the output device.
In other words, we’re preparing designs to be printed on our own digital wallpaper printing machine, rather than preparing files to be rotary printed by our clients.
With all this being said, why does matter to you as the customer?
Digital fabric printing, and digitally printed wallpaper are markets that are quickly developing, and where there is demand, supply will follow.
So there are many services being created with the ability to print onto textiles and/or wallpaper, as a result – you’ll probably find many options when you’re looking for a digital fabric printer or digital wallpaper printing firm.
The reason we’re keen to point out our rich history in traditional print, is that we think most people will appreciate that while anyone can invest in a printer, and anyone can press “print”, our vast experience in printing sets us apart from many print firms which have been created by accountants and investors in response to an emerging market.
We’re not suggesting that newer established companies without our history and experience can’t do the job, we’re simply pointing out that our strength is our deeply ingrained understanding of printing, which comes from our long history in the industry.