Kent-based charity and social enterprise RBLI (Royal British Legion Industries) has spent more than £250,000 to modernise its sign printing business ahead of the Department for Transport’s initiative to provide new gateway signs for tourist destinations.
RBLI, which provides training, jobs, housing and welfare support for the Armed Forces community and disabled and vulnerable people, already produces signs for the road and rail industries. Its purchase of a new Mutoh Zephyr printer and Zund flatbed plotter means the charity will be one of only four organisations in the country who has the advanced technology to produce the new style tourist gateway signs.
According to RBLI’s commercial manager, Robert James, “investing in the new technology is a quantum leap forward for RBLI’s social enterprise business. Not only does this investment mean we can produce the new tourist gateway signs, it also enables us to further improve quality and shorten the length of time it takes to make our existing range of signs - reducing the cost to the organisation overall.”
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Transport have worked closely with the sign manufacturing industry to develop new boundary signs that can incorporate full colour photographic images digitally printed onto Rennicks Nikkalite Ultralite retroreflective sheeting. This new and radical change to the traditional sign process has been designed to help boost tourism throughout the UK.