Contact Originators has received three prestigious Warrants from The Stationers’ Company for its innovative technologies – MagnaForma™, PrintHQ, and Optimus™.
The Stationers’ Warrants, granted by the 600-year-old Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, represent a mark of recognition highlighting excellence within the communications and content industries. Each Warrant is awarded following a rigorous assessment process against criteria including original design, high-quality manufacturing techniques, effective use of materials, sustainable packaging, and relevance to its industry sector.
The triple recognition marks Contact Originators as one of the most innovative businesses in the printing and packaging sector, with each technology addressing distinct challenges faced by today’s converters. Contact’s three awarded innovations were formally recognised at the Stationers’ Livery Lunch on March 10, 2025, at Stationers’ Hall in London.
MagnaForma™, a world-first 2.8m wide mounted multi-piece photopolymer flexographic plate, revolutionises corrugated printing by allowing printers to utilise their presses’ full width potential. Traditional plates have typically limited printers to just 1.9m of their press width, but MagnaForma™ delivers a 48% increase in print yield while maintaining exceptional dimensional accuracy to 100 microns across the entire plate width, with a precise 0.2mm register across prints.
PrintHQ, which claimed gold at the 2023 Stationers’ Innovation Excellence Awards, brings digital automation to shim mounting through integrated inkjet technology. The system prints job information directly onto plate shims and generates QR codes for instant job recall, eliminating manual labelling, reducing human error, and creating a digitally traceable and paperless workflow from prepress to print.
Optimus™, recognised at the 2019 Stationers’ Innovation Excellence Awards, delivers improved ink laydown while reducing ink usage by up to 20% and ink formulation costs by up to 10%. The patent-pending technology combines advanced studio techniques with tailored plate surface patterns and LED exposures, offering both economic and environmental benefits for corrugated printers.
Steve Mulcahy, CEO at Contact Originators, commented: “Securing three Stationers’ Warrants is an extraordinary achievement that stands as a testament to our exceptional team. We’re fortunate to have some of the finest creative and technical talent in UK print, people who take genuine pride in solving complex industry challenges and driving innovation forward. This recognition validates the hard work, dedication and vision that defines Contact Originators.
“These technologies each represent our unique perspective on the printing industry. From MagnaForma’s width capabilities to PrintHQ’s digitalisation of traditionally manual processes and Optimus’s resource optimisation, each innovation addresses challenges that only Contact, with our particular viewpoint across the supply chain, could identify and solve. We’re creating solutions that help our customers maximise efficiency, reduce waste, and achieve superior print quality in ways no one else can.”
Click here to learn more about Contact’s approach to innovation.
