Author Archives: Bob

Ace service from Silver Fox’s Special Blown Fibre Label Tape

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Silver Fox often work with their clients to match their particular labelling needs. On this occasion the Silver Fox team was put to the challenge, by a well-known tennis club in London SW19. Specially developed for that club’s particular needs, tape contains the words ‘BLOWN FIBRE’, accompanied by the ‘Warning’ logo, in black with a yellow background.

 

Nick Michaelson, CEO of Silver Fox, commented: “Because we have also pre-perforated the roll of tape at fixed intervals, it has enabled the installer to remove an exact amount suitable to wrap round the blown fibre tube and so quickly apply it.  This saves a lot of time and material – and allows the engineer to produce a very good quality job. 

 

“This adds to the growing range of optical fibre solutions offered by Silver Fox, including the new optical fibre flag labels for ideal for optical patch cables.” 

 

Silver Fox, a leading UK manufacturer of labelling solutions, manufactures all of its many ranges of labels in the UK. Its products are routinely used in the Oil & Gas, Power, Rail and Data & Telecoms industries worldwide – and now, in the Sports sector too. 

 

Other products in Silver Fox’s tape range are extensively used in the offshore oil and gas sector. Its optical fibre flag labels, though, are particularly used for optical fibre patch leads within the data and telecoms sector.

New Senior Airport Chaplain for London Luton Airport

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The Rev Canon Liz Hughes is set to succeed the Rev Michael Banfield as Senior Chaplain at London Luton Airport, when Michael retires later this summer. Luton-based Liz was appointed to her new post by Workplace Matters (WM), an ecumenical charity which takes Christian values into the workplace and which, among other things, oversees the chaplaincy work at London Luton Airport.

Liz Hughes.

 

For the last 14 years, Liz has been chaplain at The Hospice of St Francis, working with patients, staff and volunteers of all faiths – and none – and maintaining working relationships with local leaders of mainstream Christian groups and faith leaders. Previously, Liz had been an honorary chaplain to both the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Police Services.She is married to Paul, who is the Archdeacon of Bedford, and they have adult children, Chris and Nicola.

 

Ordained as a priest in the Church of England nearly 20 years ago, Liz became an Honorary Canon of the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Albans earlier this year. However, the main focus of her ministry has been outside the Church; establishing relationships and trust with individuals and community groups that have little or no experience of formal religious institutions.

 

“Liz already has nearly 20 years of maintaining and building pastoral and spiritual care within a chaplaincy context,” said the Rev Dr John Scott, WM’s chief executive. “We’re delighted that she’ll be making use of her experience and expertise in this area within the context of London Luton Airport.”

 

Liz commented: “Having had many years’ first-hand experience of chaplaincy, I’m excited by the prospect of taking on a more substantial role as a Team Leader. I’m looking forward to both maintaining and expanding the high quality of pastoral and spiritual care across the whole airport community, in what is a busy and diverse setting.

 

“Having lived as a family, and worked in West Hertfordshire and South Bedfordshire for the last 30 years, London Luton Airport has been our airport of choice when travelling to our holiday destinations,” she added. “I feel I know the airport well as a traveller and am now keen to learn more about the aviation industry from the other side.”

 

Employing over 500 people directly and some 8,000 people indirectly, London Luton Airport is the UK’s fifth largest passenger airport, dealing with 9.6m passengers in 2012. Some 96% of its passengers fly on scheduled – rather than charter – services and 89% of its passengers fly on international flights, leaving 11% of passengers to fly on domestic flights.

Waste King in cannabis clean-up

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After two men were jailed for operating a cannabis factory at a house in Harrow, which produced an almost ‘industrial’ quantity of the class-B drug, the house’s landlord engaged Waste King, a specialist collections, clearance and recycling company based in Hemel Hempstead, to make it fit, once more, for human habitation.

 

Having discovered more than 500 cannabis plants growing in four rooms of the house earlier this year, police had destroyed the plants but the house’s owners still needed to turn the property from the ‘farm’ that it had become to a house. So they turned to Waste King.

 

Waste King’s operations director, Andy Cattigan, commented: “Waste King’s Environment Agency-licensed staff are skilled in both house and garden clearance – and this job provided elements of both!”

 

Waste King’s operatives are qualified to remove almost anything: including furniture, white goods, carpets and electronics – as well as green waste. They do all the loading, cleaning-up, take all the items away for recycling – and sweep up and ensure that everything is tidy before they leave.

 

“Waste King trucks tend to compact more waste than other waste companies due to their 16 cubic yard capacity,” Andy pointed out. “This means that Waste King can collect more junk at a more competitive rate.

   

“Moreover,” he added, “Waste King pledges to dispose of all waste properly and ethically – which, in this case at least, is probably a good thing.”

Cormant claims Silver Fox labels are ‘just right’

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Customers of Cormant, a global information, communication and technology infrastructure management company are benefitting from its association with labelling solutions specialist, Silver Fox. In particular, Silver Fox’s wrap-around self-laminating cable labels are popular with Cormant, Inc.

 

Cormant, a US-British-Australian information, communication and technology infrastructure management company, focuses on providing DCIM and connectivity infrastructure management systems for medium to very large organisations spanning all industries across the globe. Cormant’s key customers include multinationals from the banking, consulting, IT, travel, hotel, government, manufacturing, health and telecommunications industries.

 

Its constant search for the most efficient and cost-effective products to support its data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) solution led Cormant to Silver Fox, the Hertfordshire-based leader in UK-manufactured, independently tested, durable labelling solutions which are designed to turn time into profit.

 

According to Paul Goodison, the co-founder and CEO of Cormant, the company needed to find a specific sized ‘self-laminating’ label on which it could print barcodes to supply to its customers. He explained: “The label is applied to cables to support auto-identification of these cables using the Cormant-CS DCIM mobile computer and barcode scanner.

 

“Silver Fox was able to make a custom-sized wrap-around, self-laminating label to optimise the label readability once it was applied to a cable,” said Paul. “All the ‘standard’ sized labels that we’d looked at before we discovered Silver Fox and its products were either too small, making identification problematic, or too big – meaning that there was an additional cost to apply them and, potentially, they still resulted in lower readability.

 

“Silver Fox’s solution was ‘just right’ for Cormant.”

 

Available in laser or thermal printer options, Silver Fox’s wrap-around cable labels – known as the Prolab® range – self-laminate to protect the ident (ID) on the label. Unusually for wrap-around self-laminating labels, the Prolab range includes labels up to 50mm wide, to accommodate longer cable IDs.

A Cormant customer uses Silver Fox labels.

 

“In addition, with environmental considerations becoming more prominent these days, it’s important to remember that all Silver Fox Prolab thermally printable labels are made of polyethylene. This is more environmentally friendly than the PVC traditionally used for such labels,” said Silver Fox’s CEO, Nick Michaelson.

 

Paul Goodison commented: “The Silver Fox labels allow us to supply our customers with the optimal label for the task – and, crucially, this ensures a very high identification rate. This means that our customers can manage all aspects of their data centres – which can cost tens of millions of pounds to build and operate.

 

“With standard labels, the time to identify a cable could be longer and this leads to lower staff productivity and the potential for processes not being followed,” added Paul, who has more than two decades of experience managing major IT projects across the globe.

 

“We’ve always found Silver Fox to be responsive to our needs,” said Paul. “We operate globally and it’s great to see that, while Silver Fox – a UK company – has a worldwide reach and can support our needs anywhere in the world. As a consequence, there should be the opportunity to expand the range of labels Silver Fox will be supplying to Cormant. We see the opportunity to have Silver Fox supply pre-printed labels as a possible step in the future.”

 

 

Silver Fox updates its range of wrap-around cable labels

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As part of its commitment to constantly update and improve its extensive range of labelling solutions, Silver Fox has recently introduced the Prolab® Select range of wrap-round self-laminating cable labels.

 

Wrap-around cable labels from Silver Fox.

 

 

These labels use a new, much faster manufacturing process than was previously the case – and this process enables these labels to be produced at lower cost to the user.

 

However, Silver Fox, a leading UK manufacturer of labelling solutions, has developed a completely new format for the printable area and so has been able to maintain the very high opacity already achieved with their existing range – so the result is lower cost labels with the same opacity as Silver Fox’s well-known premium brand of wrap-round self-laminating cable labels.

 

Routinely used in the Oil & Gas, Power, Rail and Data & Telecoms industries worldwide, all Silver Fox labels are manufactured in the UK.

 

Nick Michaelson, CEO of Silver Fox, commented: “This new label range is the result of a long term development project with the key objectives of maintaining the opacity and durability of our existing wrap round labels but, at the same time, reducing the costs of production which, in turn, could be passed onto our users.  We’re delighted that our research teams have cracked it!

 

“This is all part of our commitment to continually innovate in the market and offer cost and time saving solutions for our users,” he added. “If you like, it’s all about turning ‘Time into Profit’.”

Silver Fox launches optical fibre flag labels

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Optical fibre flag labels, from Silver Fox.

Silver Fox, a leading UK manufacturer of labelling solutions, has launched a new range of labels that can be applied to any optical fibre cable. Optical fibre labelling can be tricky, but Silver Fox’s Optical Fibre Flag Labels offer a durable, convenient printed solution that can be produced via a standard office laser printer – thus helping engineers to improve their ‘labelling output and efficiency’.

 

The labels are shaped with a special ‘shoulder’ that allows the engineer to properly align the label with the optical fibre as they are being applied to the fibre. This greatly improves label alignment, so the finished job takes less time and is neater.

 

Moreover, because the labels can be printed on any standard printer, engineers don’t need to purchase a special label printer, or order them to be printed elsewhere – thus saving them both time and money. 

 

Silver Fox Optical Fibre Flag Labels are backed with super strength adhesive for long-term bonding. 

 

They have been successfully independently tested to withstand temperatures ranging between 85°C and minus 40°C. Other tests include: humidity, salt mist spray and even H2S (hydrogen sulphide) exposure.

 

“Applying optical fibre flags can be a fiddly, time-consuming job, but our solution makes this task much easier,” explained Nick Michaelson, CEO of Silver Fox.  “Using Silver Fox Optical Fibre Flag Labels, engineers can now print and apply labels more accurately and efficiently – turning time into profit.”

Wombling Waste King helps Haileybury archives

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Despite so many of us being familiar with The Wombles – making good use of the things that other people throw away – as a society, we still throw away valuable parts of our community heritage.

 

Waste King, a specialist collections, clearance and recycling company based in Hemel Hempstead, recently received – as part of a house clearance contract – a wooden box containing some 45 glass negatives dating from around the time of the First World War. They were labelled and, on inspection appeared to show, among other things, ‘the Pyper boys’ and ‘Mr Reid’.

 

Waste King’s directors, Glenn Currie and Andy Cattigan, passed the box of negatives to Helen Little, who is a keen genealogist, to see if she could discover more of the history and significance of these photographs. Helen’s research produced a family tree for the Pypers.

 

Indeed, her discoveries led to three brothers (the Pypers) who had followed their father in being pupils at Haileybury, in Hertford Heath. A number of the photographs were obviously of Haileybury – and others could have been taken there.

 

The next step was to contact Haileybury to pursue the research, via the school’s Archivist, Toby Parker.

The Haileybury badge.

 

The negatives turned out to be of significant interest – not just in terms of the Pyper family (the three boys had been pupils at Haileybury from 1914 to 1919) and their achievements at school (and subsequently). In particular, there was a picture of a biplane coming in to land in ’20 acre field’ in the school’s grounds.

 

Toby explained that pupils from Haileybury played a key part in the formation of the Royal Flying Corps (later to become the RAF), since the first three RFC squadron commanders were all from Haileybury. Moreover, several of the leading aviators and air aces of those early years of flying visited the school.

 

This picture may well relate to one of these visits and, if so, could be of great significance to the school’s archives. Toby is continuing the research into these photos.

 

Waste King’s managing director, Glenn Currie, commented: ”These negatives – so nearly thrown into a landfill site – are merely the most recent example, for Waste King, of materials with a historical significance that are just thrown away in house and garage clearances.

 

“The negatives have added some valuable archive information to Haileybury, including opening a human interest window on the school at a distance of nearly 100 years. They’ve also thrown some light on Haileybury’s connection with the early days of powered flight and, in particular, the formation of the RFC/RAF.

 

“Of course, this story is merely the tip of an archivistic iceberg,” he added. “‘Wombling waste companies’, such as Waste King, are likely to unearth other ‘finds’ with similarly interesting stories.

 

“So, if you’re throwing away any documents or photos which could have a ‘history’, think twice before you consign them to landfill,” said Glenn. “Not only will you be helping the environment, you could also be contributing an otherwise unknown piece of information to our national historical heritage.”

Eco-friendly Fox-in-a-Box delights customer

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A UK manufacturer of labelling solutions, Silver Fox, developed ‘Fox-In-A-Box’, intending it to be an easy-to-use, cost-effective solution for printing large volumes of cable labels with all the essential components supplied in a single box.

 

It has been put to the test – which it passed with flying colours – by Bruce Giffen, Managing Director of Waverley Engraving, a St Albans-based specialist in engraving and sign making for the electrical industry.  The company specialises in industrial engraving, such as labels and electrical panels but among its other activities are laser etching, vinyl lettering and producing acrylic letters for sign making.

 

The Fox-in-a-Box kit includes a Plug’N’Play thermal printer, labelling software, a universal guidance system for heat-shrink and non-shrink tubing, full length thermal ribbon and connecting cables – in fact everything needed to start printing labels. Labels that can be printed include: tie-on cable labels, heat-shrink, non-shrink, wrap-around self- laminating labels and 2-part wire marking. To help with setting up, there is also a manual and the company offers a free bookable telephone support/set-up session that also includes software training. 

Fox-in-a-Box.

 

Bruce said: “Not only do we now have a reliable thermal printing machine, we get lots of customer support from Silver Fox and we also get regular upgrades to the software as part of the package, which is all done online and is very useful.

 

“The printer has a smaller footprint than our previous cable labelling machine,” he continued. “It’s quieter, cheaper and easier to run and the printer has three speed settings – which means it can produce labels faster than was possible before and it does it without losing any print quality. In addition, the labels that we produce via the Silver Fox thermal printer have a better ‘look and feel’ than the ones we used to produce.

 

“We find that Silver Fox’s Labacus Innovator software. gives us more than sufficient control over the label design – in terms of the fonts we can use and the size of the type – than any other labelling method,” said Bruce. “With the Silver Fox product, we can make whatever changes we need to the labels we’re producing.

 

“We’ve also noticed that, since we’ve been using Silver Fox labelling products, the amount of wastage in producing the labels has fallen dramatically,” he said. “Using other cable label production processes, there was some label wastage when you were setting up the system – and these labels aren’t cheap, with each label costing between 70p and 90p, that could add up! However, there is no wastage at all with the Silver Fox process. Any mistakes on the labels can be amended and there is no need to run a ‘test’ label before starting the labelling process.

 

“Furthermore, whereas other printers use only a small part of the printer ribbon, the Silver Fox thermal printer offers users two widths of ribbon – and it’s also possible to print two labels together, which further reduces ribbon wastage.

 

Bruce added: “I’m particularly pleased to see that the Silver Fox labels come loaded onto a cardboard reel and packaged in a cardboard box. That makes recycling these reels and the packaging simple. There’s no need to put any of this into landfill. Contrastingly, other manufacturers supply their labels on plastic spools – which can’t be recycled. So Silver Fox’s labels are demonstrably more environmentally friendly.

 

“We’re delighted with both the products and the customer service we get from Silver Fox,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll be using more and more Silver Fox products – to help us exceed our customers’ expectations.”

Fox boxes clever to help part of ‘UK plc’

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‘Fox-In-A-Box’ – recently launched by Silver Fox, a leading UK manufacturer of labelling solutions – is proving its worth as a cost-effective solution for printing large volumes of cable labels with all the essential components supplied in a single box. 

Fox-in-a-Box.

 

The kit includes a Plug’N’Play thermal printer, labelling software, a universal guidance system for heat-shrink and non-shrink tubing, full length thermal ribbon and connecting cables – in fact everything needed to start printing labels. To help with setting up, there is also a manual and the company offers a free bookable telephone support/set-up session that also includes software training. 

 

Already, Fox-In-A-Box has helped industrial labelling specialist, Waverley Engraving, to fulfil a large order that would have otherwise been impossible.

 

Based near St Albans, in Hertfordshire, Waverley Engraving specialises in engraving and sign making for the electrical industry, working with contractors for such organisations as London Underground Ltd (LUL) and Network Rail. For the last four years or so, it has been supplying cable labels for use in a number of organisations, including LUL.

 

Bruce Giffen, Waverley Engraving’s Managing Director explained: “The traditional way of labelling these cables was via placing individual rubber letters onto the cables. It was both intricate and time consuming work. Then newer methods of cable labelling were developed and we began using them. However, there were some major issues with these methods with regards to the quality of the print on the labels.”

 

So Bruce was quick to buy a Fox-in-a-Box. He soon noticed that it offers some distinct advantages. Importantly, Silver Fox not only manufactures all its labels in the UK but also holds large stocks of label ‘blanks’. This means that Silver Fox can supply its customers’ needs extremely quickly.

 

“Silver Fox has a larger range of labels – in terms of size and colours – than any other supplier we’ve found,” stated Bruce. “And, because these labels are made in the UK whatever amount of labels we need are only a telephone call away. Delivery is never a problem. For example, we had an order for 1,000 printed cable labels that were being installed that evening but we only had some 800 blanks in stock. So I was able to jump in the car and collect some more from Silver Fox. Any other supplier would have taken between four and six weeks to supply the materials we needed – so without Silver Fox, we couldn’t have taken the order, let alone been able to supply the goods within the necessary timescale.

 

“I see our relationship with Silver Fox progressing very nicely,” said Bruce. “We’re involved with some large Network Rail and Transport for London (TFL) projects – and the labelling of cables is a requirement on most electrical installations these days. Silver Fox is very supportive as a supplier. It’s certainly helping this small part of ‘UK plc’ to prosper and grow in challenging economic times.”

New ownership for eXact learning solutions revealed

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Following its acquisition by Lattanzio Group, eXact learning solutions (ELS) has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Lattanzio Learning.

 

ELS addresses information technology-related aspects and applications of learning through its suite of applications. Its award-winning learning content management system (LCMS), eXact learning suite, supports the production, management and delivery of digital contents and related services. ELS will continue to serve all aspects of the LCMS market and, through the efforts of its highly skilled team of professionals, expects to be releasing new, updated versions of its various products over the next few months.

 

Ezio Lattanzio, the new owner of eXact learning solutions, commented: “In recent months, knowledge management has become an increasingly important issue for organizations. This trend convinces us that our solutions have a value and a use above and beyond those of pure eLearning. Increasingly, organizations are investing in state-of-the-art technology infrastructure – which includes the eXact learning suite – to bring them a competitive advantage.

Ezio Lattanzio.

 

“We’ll be enhancing ELS’s core business, knowing that our technological solutions are among the best available regarding knowledge management and knowledge enhancement  for both public and private organizations,” added Mr Lattanzio, who recently joined the Board of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), a consortium which aims to change the way Europe learns.

 

Ezio Lattanzio, the founder of Lattanzio group and the owner of eXact learning solutions, is the President of the Italian Association of Management Consulting Firms (Confindustria Assoconsult), the Chairman of the European Federation of Management Consultancies Association (FEACO) and a member of the Main Board of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG).

 

Lattanzio Learning is the result of the merger of eXact learning solutions’ training, knowledge management and consultancy activities with the deep training expertise of Lattanzio e Associati S.p.A. Hence, Lattanzio Learning is on track to become the main Italian player operating in both the domestic and international markets, with a strong international orientation, offering traditional training solutions, distance and blended learning, digital content for public and private organizations. Lattanzio Learning’s core business is mainly training, knowledge management and consultancy.