About CPL Works

Four Decades of Experience.
A New Generation of Machines.
 

CPL Works is the latest chapter in a family business that began in 1986 with Creative Printers of London.

Today, we remain a family-run business, designing and building specialist machines for hot foil printing, personalisation and related applications here in England.
 

Although our machines have changed considerably over the years, the principles behind the business have remained much the same: practical engineering, personal service, attention to detail and a genuine commitment to the people who use our machines.
 

For our customers, that means dealing with people who understand the machines they sell because we have spent almost four decades working with them, developing them and, most importantly, listening to the people who use them.
 

Our new generation of CPL Works machines combines modern design and manufacturing methods with something that cannot be created overnight — nearly 40 years of first-hand experience.
 

Where It All Began

Creative Printers of London was established in 1986, at a time when hot foil stamping was supported by a thriving specialist trade in Britain.
 

Over the years, we worked with many of the machines, suppliers and manufacturers that formed part of that industry. This gave us an understanding not only of how these machines were constructed, but of what makes a machine practical and dependable in everyday use.
 

Among the companies we dealt with was John T. Marshall (JTM), a highly respected British company whose history stretched back more than a century.

JTM ceased trading many years ago, but its name and machines will still be familiar to many people who have worked in the traditional hot foil printing industry.
 

Our long-standing relationship with JTM gave us first-hand familiarity with their machinery. Through regular business dealings and visits over the years, we came to know their machines well, including the traditional swing-out chase arrangement used on a number of their models.
 

The DUT-21 — A Little Piece of CPL History

One particularly personal connection to those early years is the DUT-21.
 

The name has a rather unusual origin.

DUT 21 was the registration number of our company van in the 1980s. We liked it enough to use the registration as the model name for one of our machines — and the CPL DUT-21 was born.
 

The DUT-21 subsequently became a well-known name within the hot foil stamping industry and remained closely associated with Creative Printers of London.
 

We still have an original photograph of that very van today. What was once simply our company vehicle has become a rather special reminder of where we came from.
 

Learning From the Past, Designing for Today

As we develop today's generation of CPL Works machines, some of that early experience inevitably remains part of our engineering heritage.
 

We don't set out to reproduce machines from the past. Instead, where a traditional engineering principle has proved itself over many years, it can provide inspiration for a new solution — one that we can reinterpret, refine and incorporate into our own designs using modern manufacturing methods.
 

The swing-out chase on one of our latest machines is a good example.
The principle takes inspiration from the traditional JTM arrangement with which we became familiar decades ago, but the mechanism has been reconsidered and redesigned specifically for a modern CPL Works machine.
 

It's a small detail, but one that represents something important to us: respecting good engineering from the past while continuing to develop machines for the way our customers work today.
 

Still a Family Business

Almost four decades after Creative Printers of London began, CPL Works remains a family business.

That matters to us because we want to retain the personal relationship with customers that has always been part of the company.
 

We are not interested simply in selling a machine and forgetting about it. We want our customers to buy something that is well considered, straightforward to use and supported by people who actually understand how it works.
 

Being a relatively small family business also allows us to listen. Many of the improvements we make come from practical experience, conversations with customers and asking a simple question:

“Can we make this better?”

Quite often, we can.
 

The Next Chapter

The CPL Works name may be new, but the experience behind it isn't.
 

It represents the next stage of a family business that has been involved with specialist printing machinery since 1986 — taking what we have learned over nearly 40 years and applying it to a new generation of machines.
 

Some things have changed enormously since that old CPL van was on the road.

Some things haven't.
 

We still believe in practical engineering, personal service and building machines that we would be happy to use ourselves.
 

CPL Works
Designed and built in England. Established 1986.