Business Weekly

ICI Imagedata recently moved into new offices at Linnet House in Brantham, on the Suffolk and Essex border

 The company is focused on building up major market opportunities from the firm’s new headquarters and believes that Dutch chemicals specialist, Akzo Nobel NV, can provide the necessary support through its expansive sales channels and global expertise.

ICI Imagedata is one of the few businesses worldwide that manufactures consumables for thermal dye-sublimation, electro-photographic and inkjet printing technologies. Its products range from the latest high-quality papers for the fast-growing digital photography market to overhead transparency films.

The firm also works with partners to develop new organic coatings on polymeric films for use in electronics applications. With 150 staff, it is a key division in the Regional and Industrial businesses of ICI, which turned over £431m in 2006, and now belongs to Akzo Nobel.

Akzo has designs on expanding its already enormous offering. It is a global leader in coatings and one of the largest specialty chemicals companies in the world, employing around 68,000 people worldwide and delivering revenues for 2006 of €15 billion (£11.2bn).

“We will create a leading global coatings and specialty chemicals company with a diversified geographic presence and well developed access to fast-growing markets in Asia-Pacific, particularly China and Latin America,” said Hans Wijers, CEO of Akzo Nobel.

This combination of approach and reach sits very well with Imagedata’s managing director, Ken Dowling, whose company already has incredible growth rates, but is looking for more, most of which will be overseas. The global market represents 85 per cent of all Imagedata’s sales.

“Our Pictaflex and Stabilex-Ultra solutions represent 40 to 45 per cent of the business and are growing at 25 to 30 per cent a year. We needed the resource of a new facility and new support, e.g. Azko Nobel, to support this.

Pictaflex is a unique imaging system that enables 3D items to be decorated with a full colour design or photographic image.

“There is a move to personalising with colour and images. For example, a major motor manufacturer may be buying 400 PCs a month, most of these provide an opportunity to advertise the firm when meeting with suppliers and customers.

“Or Nokia, which is manufacturing 1 million phones a day. We can take any image and coat a product on a 2 or 3D setting.”

Stabilex-Ultra is used to thermally stabilise polyester films for use in the demanding downstream processes of the electronics, membrane switch and advanced displays industries. A further application with serious potential is diabetic test strips; 80 billion are produced every year.

“We are always looking for new sales and ways of working,” said Dowling. “Akzo Nobel are in markets all around the world that we had been involved in through agents and where we can now maybe get a more direct access.

“As well as its sales channels, Azko Nobel has people who can help install customer operations in places such as China, Poland and North America. Finding the right people to do this normally takes substantial investment, but Azko Nobel already has the people and they are native to those markets.”

Imagedata also has a new £750,000 headquarters and manufacturing operation in Brantham on the Essex and Suffolk border, midway between the towns of Ipswich and Colchester.

The company only recently moved there, bringing staff within closer contact of each other and providing room for further expansion.

Named after one of the many birds that nest on the Stour Estuary bordering the plant, the Linnet House facility harbours new product development laboratories, conference and demonstration rooms, as well as a number of state of the art machines for manufacturing new products on a pilot scale, forming the hub of the company’s commercial, product development and supply chain operations.

Bringing staff from different but related disciplines and functions closer to each other will help the company’s development believes Dowling, a view shared by the majority of Cambridge’s well known technology consultancies.

“It is a fantastic place to work and provides a perfect environment in which to develop and market the exciting new products we will be launching over the coming years,” said Dowling.
 

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