With textile printing industry expected to double every two years. Fabric company Materialised a family owned Australian business based South of Sydney is bringing its printing operations back to Australia from Asia, using three Roland DG wide format printers.

Owner Gary Price said that the company has had digital printers for more than five years, but only used them to print samples to show customers, and then outsourced to rotogravure printers in Asia until a year ago.

The south-western Sydney-based company produces custom-printed fabric for customers in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia, especially for hotels, hospitals, and nursing homes.

At the beginning of last year it installed three Roland DG XF-640 dye sublimation printers and now prints 25 percent of work in-house, and Price said that all work will be inhouse in the next five years.

In the past year or so they decided to accelerate transition from rotogravure to digital, and that has gained momentum.

They like the idea of applying the same design to a whole raft of base cloths for different functions so they can print just as easily on waterproof upholstery as they can on a shear flimsy drapery or a tablecloth.

According to Digital print operator Carla Yeung, Materialised can now print 200m every 22 hours on the new Roland DG XF-640, compared to 50m a day with its three old Roland DG XJ-740s.

Sometimes they have one or two day deadlines so being able to print that fast is really good for us. It prints fast and dries quickly.

After a thorough look at the market, Price stuck with Roland DG because it was familiar and he had good experience with the previous machines.