60 seconds with DecTek

Dectek: short-run specialists
Dectek: short-run specialists

DecTek was formed 18 years ago on a kitchen table. A printer, resin dome setup and a fax machine (remember those?) all financed on a couple of credit cards.

From these humble beginnings DecTek “soon developed a reputation for quality, great prices and reliable customer service”. Nowadays the business features one of Europe’s most advanced doming laboratories. The chaos of Covid presented challenges and the firm took bold steps to make the best from a potentially disastrous situation. Owner Mike Beese says: “We took the opportunity to review our business and devised a growth strategy for us and our partners.” To support this DecTek has invested over £1m in new equipment and took on extra production space. The business now has an enviable range of digital print, cut and finishing technologies. 

Where are you based?
DecTek has two sites in South Wales totalling more than 2,780sqm

How many staff do you have?
30, we expect this to rise to 50-plus over the next year

What does your firm do?
No day is the same at DecTek. Our only constant is our output of millions of domed labels each month. Complementary to that we could be producing name badges, signs, specialist labels, full colour mugs, door mats to table cloths, photo panels to wallpapers, PVC banners to cardboard POS and small-format to large-format custom packaging. A large percentage of our work is bespoke to our customers requirements and we act as their product development and manufacturing arm

What’s your typical customer?
Mainly trade resellers and their wonderfully varied customer bases

Which geographic areas do you serve?
Nationwide 

What equipment do you run?
Canon, Epson, Mimaki, Gerber Edge, HP and Xerox digital printers, a robotic carousel mug press plus Zünd and Titanium cutters and other specialist finishing kit

What’s your USP?
Being interested in short-run work. Customers increasingly demand greater flexibility in their marketing communications and packaging. Moving away from bulk runs to a ‘little and often’ requirement. And this is exactly our approach. Print on demand as required

What’s your company’s motto/mission statement?
‘Challenging normal’

What’s been your proudest achievement in recent years?
Maintaining our growth plan despite the most challenging trading conditions in a generation

What’s your team’s favourite biscuit?
Chocolate digestives although the jury’s out between plain or milk. We will just have to keep tasting them until we decide