COT Holdings Celebrates 40 Years in Business

What’s the printing business like in Barbados? Highly competitive, according to COT Holdings’ Nigel Worme. Learn how this innovative company is investing in the future of its business with a brand-new HP Indigo 10000 in this article sponsored by HP.

Barbados is a small island, only 21 miles long by 14 miles wide, but it has an astounding 40 registered printers! “I think God loves printers so much, and that’s why he made so many,” joked Nigel Worme, CEO and Managing Director of COT Holdings, an innovative provider of print and marketing services that is sharply focused on client success. “Being on an island,” he explains, “we don’t have the luxury of partnering to gain access to the wide range of services our clients need, so we have to have as much under one roof as possible. This is both to be able to quickly and efficiently serve the needs of our clients and to position ourselves at a competitive advantage.”

COT Holdings has a manroland 500 5-color UV press plus coater, a Kodak waterless DI press, and an HP Indigo 5600 digital press, and celebrated its 40^th birthday by acquiring a brand-new 7-color HP Indigo 10000 digital color press. The company also has a full bindery, including die cutting, stripping, folding, gluing, saddle stitching, wire-o, a perfect binder, foiling and more.

“Utilization on much of our equipment is relatively low,” Worme explains, “but since we don’t have anyone to farm work out to locally, we want to be prepared for as many different client needs as possible.” COT was an early adopter of digital printing. “The HP Indigo 10000 is our fifth HP Indigo press,” he says. “We acquired our first Indigo press in 2001 and have continued to upgrade them over the years. With the acquisition of the HP Indigo 10000, we have significantly expanded our Indigo capabilities.”

Digital Business Growing

Today, COT’s work is split about 55/45% between packaging and commercial print. “I anticipate that those two segments of our business will continue to grow about equally,” Worme reports. “Although the conventional offset business continues to decline, we expect our digital printing business to grow at a good pace, augmented by an increase in web-to-print volume and the larger sheet size of the HP Indigo 10000 which broadens the range of applications we can produce. Digital accounts for about 15% of our business today, so there is lots of room to grow. The HP Indigo 10000 will be a critical element of that growth. The opportunity to produce short-run digital packaging, versioned applications and prototypes is now a reality.”

In addition to general commercial print, COT also produces signs and banners produced using its HP 280 Latex wide format printer.

Why COT?

Worme comments that customers don’t come to COT because of new equipment, per se. “They are not really that interested in what equipment we have,” he says. “Rather, they are concerned about how we can make their lives easier. We are successful because we can provide highly innovative integrated marketing solutions. To do that, we harness many forms of media and technologies and apply them to our clients’ unique needs, serving them from under one roof, faster and more economically than anyone else. Our investment in the HP Indigo 10000 is another example of our continuing effort to keep a sharp focus on client success.”