3M flies high

This film is something of an engineering marvel, having been designed to hold securely in place at extreme temperatures - from the cold found at an altitude of 35 000 feet to the heat of a New Delhi runway - and at speeds in excess of 600 miles per hour. The film, which is only slightly thicker than a sandwich bag, is also perforated to accommodate the minute air leaks that can occur when an airframe is pressurised.

This film presents fantastic opportunities to create enormous "flying billboards", as was recently demonstrated by Air New Zealand with the launch of the third instalment of "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King".

Until recently, 3M South Africa was unable to offer this material in this country as there were no authorised 3M Fabricators able to apply this highly-specialised Scotchprint Graphics film.

However, earlier this year, 3M hosted an application workshop under the leadership of Mohammad Fadavi, the technical expert from the 3M Eurolab in Germany. Companies that attended the workshop and are now authorised fabricators, are: Omnigraphics, Signco and Graffiti Designs, as well as Prosel, a Kenyan-based company. The workshop covered a number of applications, which can be applied to other areas of the signage application industry.