In response to increasing customer demand for its payments, gift, loyalty and membership card services, Thames Card Technology has invested more than £2m in cutting-edge personalisation equipment.
According to Thames Card Technology the new equipment increases its card personalisation capacity by 60%, brings loyalty key fob encapsulation in-house and delivers greater productivity.
The investments, which aim to secure Thames’ place at the forefront of RFID contactless personalisation, capitalise on a successful 2016 which saw the firm double its budgeted profit expectation.
Managing director of Thames Card Technology, Paul Underwood explained: “These investments come on the back of a big year for the company. Financial success gave us the confidence to invest.
“It’s been a big start to the year for us. In January, The Manufacturer reported on the expansion of our senior management team and the new systems we have put in place to deliver better and expanded services.”
Underwood highlighted the important role automation has played in achieving higher levels of efficiency: “Automation was key for us. The new machinery is enabling us to personalise more cards, in less time by encoding the contact, contactless and magnetic stripe interfaces, on both sides of cards, in one pass.
“Cards no longer have to be manually flipped and loaded back into the machine for a second or a third time. This means greater efficiency for us and a faster service for our customers.”
Cards with more than one interface – such as contact-based chip, contactless, magnetic stripe and barcode – offer flexibility and convenience for consumers, encouraging greater usage and engagement for brands.
Two new Atlantic Zeiser Persomaster machines offer a high-speed drop on demand (DoD) card personalisation system for all types of plastic card. Their integration aims to streamline and expedite Thames’ card production process by encoding data on the magnetic stripe, contact chip and contactless interface, printing information onto both sides of the card, attaching scratch labels and performing camera-automated verification in a single pass, on one machine.
Further investment has also been made in an AutoFeeds Cartan Card System encapsulation machine to support card-based use cases like loyalty and membership. The equipment is capable of encapsulating and punching shaped cards or key fobs, again, in a single pass.
Three Entrust Datacard MX6100 Card Issuance Systems will also boost card personalisation capacity and services for the banking market by optimising smart card personalisation and delivering edge-to-edge printing and more efficient insertion of cards and carriers into envelopes.
