Images Magazine Digital Edition August 2018

www.images-magazine.com AUGUST 2018 images 07 INDUSTRY NEWS Nova Chrome UK scales new heights for charity Members of the Nova Chrome UK team climbed Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales, in July to raise money for children‘s charity Hope House. The team raised more than £1,300 for the charity, which operates in Shropshire, Cheshire and north/mid- Wales. Hope House supports children who are not expected to live beyond their early teens, and their families. Rachael Connolly, Ryan Connolly, David Greenway, Ian McDowall and Gwenan Jones took part in the challenge. David commented: “We regularly support Hope House as a company, and the Snowdon Trek was the perfect opportunity to take our support even further. We’re looking forward to more events in future.” www.hopehouse.org.uk www.novachrome.co.uk MPs to investigate sustainability of the fashion industry The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has announced that it is investigating the social and environmental impact of disposable ‘fast fashion‘ and the wider clothing industry. The inquiry will examine the carbon, resource use and water footprint of clothing throughout its lifecycle, as well as how clothes can be recycled and waste and pollution reduced. Mary Creagh MP, chair of the EAC, said, “Fashion shouldn’t cost the earth. But the way we design, make and discard clothes has a huge environmental impact. Producing clothes requires toxic chemicals and produces climate-changing emissions. Our inquiry will look at how the fashion industry can remodel itself to be both thriving and sustainable.” The EAC will also look at manufacturing in the UK. It noted: “In recent years there has been a renewed interest in clothing that has been made in Britain. However, there are concerns that the need for quick turnaround in the supply chain to facilitate the demand for ‘fast fashion‘ has led to poor working conditions in UK garment factories.“ The EAC is inviting submissions on a number of points by 5pm on Monday 3 September, 2018, such as ‘What industry initiatives exist to minimise the environmental impact of the fashion industry?‘ and ‘How has the domestic clothing manufacturing industry changed over time? How is it set to develop in the future?‘. For the full list and a link to the submissions page, go to www.parliament.uk/ business/committees/committees-a-z/ commons-select/environmental-audit- committee/news-parliament-2017/ sustainability-of-the-fashion-industry- inquiry-launch-17-19/. The Nova Chrome team at the top of Snowdon Awesome Merchandise installs Roq screen printing press Garment decoration company Awesome Merchandise has had a four-colour, eight- station Roq You screen printing carousel installed in its Leeds printshop. Awesome – which had two M&R autos and a manual when Images visited in 2016, and is due to open a US facility in Austin, Texas, later this summer – now has four M&R autos, a manual press and an ASPE tagging machine, as well as the Roq. “We decided to go Roq as we‘d checked them out at a couple of shows and they looked like an interesting machine,“ explained co-founder Luke Hodson. “Some of the features make a lot of sense and they seem to run super smoothly, which we liked. We‘d had some good recommendations from friends in the US and so we went and took a factory tour in Portugal. We are well versed in M&R and we already purchased a 12-colour last year, so this purchase was dipping our toe in with Roq as we are also using Roq at our new location in the US.“ Luke is happy so far with the purchase, which the team is mainly using with plastisol inks. “We like the lighter pallets a lot. A bunch of the wiring is contained in the arms of the machine instead of exposed, and the machine is super smooth. We like the stability the suspended arms gives.“ He added: “The Roq purchase was about rationalising our production and having the right kind of machine for certain jobs. We need a couple of machines to print a lot of one-/two-colour work and then free up our larger autos for multi-colour work, which is what they are built for.“ As well as the Roq, the company also recently bought its first DTG machine, a Brother GTX, from MHM Direct. www.awesomemerchandise.com Awesome‘s garment production manager Michael Dixon with the new Roq carousel