I'm back from a fully relaxing holiday in the Peak District, recharged and ready for a decent summer. Not planning to go away again until maybe September or October, but I also aim to make the most of the summer by not working every weekend!

I have recently finished a project on time and on budget for a new customer where we are the only packaging company in the country able to carry out this work without using a large format diecutter. I am very pleased with this as it confirms that the investment in the Zund cutting table would open up a lot of new markets. 

The box in question used almost the entire cutting area as the blank size was 1650 x 2150mm. Final dimensions of the box were 1880 x 560 x 108 mm, in FEFCO code 0426 and using a 200K/B/200T+175s/c fluting for those who are interested in such things! I know we wouldn't have been able to do this without the Zund cutting table, and I was pleased to help our customer avoid nearly £300 in diecut tooling. Hopefully this project will open doors to more work at this very specialised end of the market.

With many companies going bankrupt, speculators see this as an ideal time to pick up bargains. I am no different, as I managed to pick up a conference table and chairs and an almost new Apple G5 MacPro computer. This came loaded with stacks of design software such as Adobe's Creative Suite 3 & 4 and Quark. In all, I guess I have about £7000 worth of kit for £700. A proper credit-crunched sized bargain! 

This will allow a more streamlined approach to our expanding design-led packaging department and will free up the existing design computer to only drive the Zund digital diecutting table.