Students at De Montfort University Leicester are busily making use of more than 100 printing screens which were donated by trading standards officers after they shut down a counterfeit operation in the city.
The equipment was being used to make illegal transfer designs of trademarks such as Adidas, Hugo Boss and G-Star Raw onto clothes which were then sold as the real thing, in an operation which netted tens of thousands of pounds.
Last year, three members of the same family – Shinderpal Singh and his sons Kuldip and Sarbjit – were jailed for their part in the operation and ordered to pay back £85,000 they were calculated to have made in the scam.
As previously reported, Trading Standards decided to donate the screens to DMU, as well as to Leicester College and The Leicester Screen Printing Workshop.
After having the illegal transfers removed, the screens are now being put to use by DMU students who are delighted with the new equipment. Each screen is valued at around £50 which means close to £6,000-worth of screens have been donated.
Holly Waite, a final year Design Crafts student, said: “There’s always a shortage of screens for third year students to use for printing so now there’s more for us all to be able to just get on with our work. There’s no way we’d have this many if it wasn’t for them being given to us because they’re so expensive.
RELATED NEWS
Visit DMU and see how we help you learn to succeed
Find out more about our brilliant Design Crafts courses
Watch the flythrough of our new campus - opening for you in 2016
“Students in all years benefit from this because as third years have priority for using them, first and second years normally have to wait so it’s better for them as well.
“When I graduate I hope to become a junior or assistant designer for a homeware company so I’ll be trying to sort out work experience and applying for loads of jobs.”
Fellow Design Crafts students Bethan Tatterton and Ellie Nolan were also pleased to see the arrival of new equipment.
Bethan, who is creating a children’s play space using screen printing techniques and wants to use her skills to work with children in hospital, said: “I have about four screens I am using at the moment and that means four less for other students to use in the first and second years. With the new stock, it means I can have even more images and not worry about running out of stock.”
Ellie added: “I think this donation is great. The more equipment we have, the better.”
Posted on Tuesday 26 May 2015