With this indefinite extension, which was confirmed earlier last week, the business said it remains the only partner that Ricoh is working with to provide desktop printers that are specifically for sublimation.

Sawgrass president Darcy Mauro said: “By matching the industry’s highest quality inks with superior Ricoh printhead technology, Sawgrass has been able to supply the widest colour gamut in the industry while delivering the best substrate performance possible, all within the limits of dye-sublimation.”

International marketing manager Andrea Evans added: “This partnership brings together the printhead expertise of Ricoh and the ink expertise of Sawgrass.

“Ricoh are committing to us to develop our next generation of desktop printers.

“We’ve got an A4 and an A3 printer – they are small and sit on top of a desk like a normal printer, but from this you can create coasters, mugs, mouse mats or t-shirts in that size. You can print about 1,500 mugs off one set of inks with the A4 printer.”

Sawgrass distributes its products through around 160 dealers in 100 countries globally, with its UK distributors including Novachrome, TheMagicTouch and XPres.

Evans said its customers range from one-man bands to companies that have an online business and produce personalised mugs for other organisations.