In our latest interview, which took place at Labelexpo Europe 2025, Robert Rae speaks to Wayne Beckett of Print Connect / Inkish. The pair cover a range of topics, such as the growth of GEW globally, the development of AeroLED2 and how it’s impacting the narrow web market, the ease of retrofitting UV LED to an existing press, and the impact a UV LED retrofit can have on energy savings.
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Wayne Beckett (WB): Hi, this is Wayne with Inkish at Labelexpo 2025, here in Barcelona. I now have the pleasure to be with Robert Rae who’s the Managing Director of GEW. Hi, Robert. Really nice to meet you.
Robert Rae (RR): Good to meet you, too.
WB: I must admit I’ve been walking around your stand and about half an hour ago it was absolutely packed solid. So, you’re obviously having a pretty good show so far.
RR: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have never known it so busy. Day one yesterday was crazy on the booth. Day two’s been extremely busy. So, we’ve been, um we’ve been selling machines. We got loads of customers coming. So, I’m really happy with the attendance. And we invested in a much bigger booth, 50% bigger than 2 years ago and still all the seats are, like, regularly taken. It’s great, so far, it’s been very busy.
WB: Because you’re quite active with exhibitions. I mean, the last interview that I did with GEW was with Marcus at Printpack India. So, I mean, you do a lot of trade shows around the world. I mean you really are a global company.
RR: Yeah, we really are. I mean, we have, you know, GEW turns over about 65 million pounds. We got 160 people. We got factory, three factories in the UK where we make everything, and around the world we have more than 100,000 UV lamps running on printing machines. So, installed across more than 70 countries and we have 40 distributors servicing and supporting and holding spare parts for that equipment all over the place, all over the world from Australia to India and Japan, down in South America, um all over Europe, of course. So yes, we’re really global. We supply to the world. We support our systems wherever they are in the world and therefore we exhibit just about anywhere there’s a printing show to…
WB: You probably do more exhibitions than we do to be fair, and that is saying something. But I mean, earlier on today I was over on the Nilpeter stand and there are your units on every unit that they’ve got over there. So twofold really I guess. I mean OEMs are obviously a big part of your business.
RR: Yeh they are.
WB: So you’ll stand here, you’re talking to end users. What are you talking to end users about?
RR: We’re talking to them a lot. You’re right. You know we have a lot of OEM partners. All of the major OEM manufacturers, definitely Europe and America are usually buying and specifying GEW equipment, not just Nilpeter. Um, and, so that’s the main part of our business, say 60% / 70% of our business is like that, but another 30 / 40% of our business is direct with end users where they have old machines, they’re looking at retrofitting them, giving them a new lease of life.
And the main thing that we talk to those end users about, certainly here at Labelexpo, is our AeroLED2 product, which is the switch to LED. This has been the huge trend in the industry over the last 10 years for UV curing. Switching from old mercury-based lamps to LED technology with so many benefits – reduced energy consumption, lower CO2 footprints, lower temperatures of the web, better registration, no ozone to extract out the factory, and so there’s so many reasons to switch to LED, low maintenance and everything always being the same, better process control.
So gradually, gradually 10 years ago that started and now LED is 50% of the production at GEW. So we’re producing half and half now LED and mercury lamps. Last year we made more than 3,000 LED modules for the narrow web market. So really LED has become a totally standard application now. So a lot of customers who have old mercury systems in their factory, maybe they’re buying new machines from OEMs with LED and they say right now I want to retrofit my old machines to LED as well. And that’s where they come in and that’s where they come and see us.
WB: So how easy is that retrofit? I mean, if I’m a label producer and I am considering going down that route, I mean, I guess you have to eventually, but how easy is it to retrofit your units, your system onto their machines?
RR: I mean, in the narrow, in the label market, it’s extremely easy. Um, every UV system that GEW made from 2015 onwards, there’s more than 50,000 of those units in the field. All of them are ready for LED. So 10 years ago, we took the decision to make all our power supplies ready for LED with our ArcLED technology, our patented ArcLED technology. Um, and that technology means that in order to switch those presses to LED, the customer just has to buy the LED cassette inside, slide out their mercury, slide in their LED, do a software update over the internet, and job’s finished.
So in, in an hour or a couple of hours, we can retrofit an entire press to LED. Um, so any machine from about 2015 onwards with our Rhino or our Rhino Light RLT power systems, it’s an hour or two upgrade. It’s super easy and you can always switch back to mercury. So you don’t lose the ability. You can just switch and swap between mercury and LED. It takes 30 seconds in a print unit to do that.
WB: And what are we talking about savings-wise, if you do that, if you make that switch?
RR: I mean, most customers are seeing returns on investments in less than 2 years from making the switch to LED. It’s really not an expensive process. It’s an easy process to do and you’re saving 50% or 70% energy versus the old mercury lamp system. So, with energy prices, you know, as they have been over recent years, you know, we’ve had spikes and it’s come back down a bit, but it’s gradually, the direction is up, certainly in Europe and we have seen, you know, enormous numbers of retrofits directly as a result of the savings that you can make.
WB: Sounds like a bit of a no-brainer to me.
RR: It is, it is a no-brainer and that’s why so many, that’s why so many customers are doing it and if they haven’t done it a lot of people are looking at it right now because it’s super easy, it’s only benefits, it benefits their customers, it gives them a selling point, lower CO2 and carbon footprint, gives them energy and money savings. And it makes their production easier, there’s no shutters, there’s no lamps, so many, many, that’s why.
WB: That’s why you’re selling so many units at the moment.
RR: Selling so many units, yeah.
WB: So, um, about the US market, I mean, obviously with things that are going on at the moment, I mean, is that going to affect you massively?
RR: Of course, it has an effect. Um, you know, the impact of tariffs is, you know, has had a big effect on the market. It’s certainly, there has been some dampening of customer confidence over there, end customers, you know, purchasing, uncertainty on exchange rates over in the US, are they going to bring the exchange rates down and that will change, you know, the investment decisions that are going on.
So, we’ve had to react. We’ve had to work very closely with our partners, very closely with our partners to figure out how to minimise the impact to customers who obviously don’t want to pay the additional tariff duty. And we’re working very hard with our OEM partners to make sure that we do everything we can to minimise the impact for customers and, you know, maximise the returns that we can, that we can still get. But we haven’t changed our supply chain. We’re still manufacturing everything in the UK and exporting from there. And the UK’s obviously been hit with a 10% tariff which is, but it’s less than some other countries.
WB: So well it’s amazing. I mean, I know you’ve got an amazing product, as a company that I’ve known for ages. It’s been an absolute pleasure and I hope you have a great rest of the show.
RR: We will do. Thanks.
Watch the interview video
Learn more about AeroLED2, here.
You can watch the original video on the Inkish website, here.