Xaar on the tiles

The Cambridge headquartered company said the relocation programme was halted during the year as the demand for its Platform 3 (P3) technology used in the decoration of ceramic tiles grew significantly. Announcing its 2010 results, Xaar said that following a thorough review, it was concluded that the financial benefit of expanding P3 significantly outweighed the cost savings of the planned manufacturing plant consolidation, and hence the plant in Järfälla, Sweden, would be required for the foreseeable future and, therefore, the relocation programme was cancelled. The change would allow all available space in the Huntingdon plant to be dedicated to P3 expansion and, as previously announced, the company will invest £22.2m to expand P3 capacity. The expansion will involve a clean-room originally built for the Sweden relocation to be allocated to P3; construction of a third full clean-room at the Huntingdon site; over 100 processing asset additions; the recruitment of close to 200 people; and a very significant installation and process qualification effort. The plan is already underway and additional capacity is due to start to come on stream in the second half of 2011 with the full capacity available by the second half of 2012. For 2010, turnover was up 32% to £54.7m (2009: £41.5m) and pre-tax profit reached £5.4m (2009: loss £0.7m); Chairman, Phil Lawler said the scope for industrial ink-jet continued to increase but the global print industry would always be governed by the general economic climate and Xaar's success was based on being able to demonstrate that its technology delivered clear economic benefits to the end user. "This has been particularly evident in our P3 markets where, specifically, the ceramics industry has found that Xaar's patented TF Technology is particularly suited to tile decoration and delivers significant advantage to ceramic tile manufacturers," he went on. "We are also seeing increasing demand for P3 from the primary label printing market and, whilst the size of the opportunity is unlikely to be of the same magnitude as ceramics, it remains a very important sector and a critical first step into the packaging market." However, printhead production was complex, he added, and some manufacturing equipment was custom-built for Xaar. That meant critical lead times were long and printhead production could not be increased as soon as Xaar would like.