Sign Africa interviewed EFI sales division manager for Africa, James Mellor, at the recent Sign Africa Durban Expo, to get insight into EFI’s perspective of Africa’s key growith areas in signage and printing.
Mellor was at the Graphix Supply World (GSW) stand for support and to provide feedback for visiting clients. GSW is a distributor of EFI’s wide and super-wide format machines.
Mellor, who has been in the print industry for about 30 years, and with EFI for about nine years, describes Africa as a very diverse market, and as there are many different divisions to EFI (not just hardware but software), the company has a lot of products to offer.
What are some of the key growth areas in Africa?
There are a number of areas to EFI in terms of products that we are involved in, but the big key areas of growth in Africa are packaging, label printing, ceramics, UV signage and fabric printing.
Can you expand on fabric printing?
We recently purchased an Italian company just over 18 months ago called Reggiani, they’re probably the top rated textile production company in the world in terms of manufacturing machines. We bought that company because they have interesting technologies that we want to adapt for our products, so that’s a big growth model for us.
How does the African market look overall?
We have experienced a lot of changes in different markets throughout Africa. Due to socioeconomic and political problems, we find certain areas are busy one year and the next year they’re quiet, so there are always challenges that we have to address. The only real constant is South Africa, which has been a major focus market for us over the last decade.
|
LOCAL DISTRIBUTOR |
