For UK print, signage and production owners watching machine time go to waste
Turn idle press hours into business purchasing power.
The hours the press sits between jobs, the bench time no one has booked, the runs you quoted for and never won — put them to work and earn Silva to spend across the network.
Whatever your shop leaves idle between jobs, the story is the same — put it to work and spend it back.
No cash changes hands for Silva · You choose exactly what you run · UK members only
Sound familiar?
You're not shopping for a capacity exchange. You're trying to solve these.
Every print and production owner feels at least one of these. Almost none connect them to the kit they’re already paying for whether it runs or not.
Does the press sit idle between jobs?
An hour the machine doesn’t run is an hour you can never bill again.
Is changeover eating your day?
Setup and make-ready between runs — time on the clock, nothing coming off the press.
Are you financing kit whether it runs or not?
The lease payment lands every month, busy or quiet.
Do customers price-shop you to the bone?
Every quote turns into a race to the bottom on margin.
Quoting for work you never win?
Studio and estimating time spent on jobs that walk out the door.
Hard to fill the quiet weeks?
Seasonal lulls where the fixed costs never take a week off.
What almost everyone misses
The idle press hours, the empty bench time, the runs you never won — that wasted capacity is real value already sitting inside your shop. Silvatree is the mechanism that turns those idle press hours into business purchasing power you can spend.
The idea
One week’s work. Two pots, not one.
The old way: work hard, cash in, cash out, bills paid, nothing left. With Silvatree you generate the same cash, but you also fill a second pot by selling idle capacity to Silvatree members. The two-pot way is: cash in, less cash out, some cash remaining — and Silva in, Silva out, paying the rest of the bills. The second pot is business purchasing power.
Wages, rent and tax drain it. A full week of work — and nothing left to show for it.
Your cash pays the expenses that can only be paid in cash — rent, wages, electricity, leases, taxes. A second pot fills from idle capacity you'd have wasted, and pays for marketing, repairs, printing, accounting, cleaning and tradesmen.
1 Silva = £1 for tax & accounting · spending power inside the network, never exchanged for cash.
How it works
Three steps, from idle press to purchasing power.
You have spare capacity
Idle press hours, quiet studio time, unbooked finishing runs — value that expires unsold the moment the machine stands still.
Silvatree puts it to work
We match the runs you can take to members who need printing, signage or packaging. You get paid in Silva for capacity that earned you nothing before.
You spend your Silva
On the things your shop already buys — paper and consumables, marketing, accountancy, van servicing, machine maintenance — keeping your cash in the bank.
New to the idea? What is a Capacity Exchange?
Where it hides
Find the spare capacity inside your print shop.
If it goes to waste the moment the machine stands still or the bench sits empty, it belongs here.
Idle machine hours
The hour the press doesn’t run is gone for good — put it to work instead.
Gaps between jobs
Fill the awkward slots too small for a cash job to justify a setup.
Spare bench time
Artwork, layout and origination hours when the queue runs thin.
Quiet plotter time
Banners, boards and vinyl runs when the roll would otherwise sit still.
Idle bindery
Cutting, folding and laminating capacity waiting on the next batch.
Off-peak production
Box, label and carton runs on shifts you’re already staffing.
Standing inventory
Paper, board and substrate lines earning nothing on the shelf.
Off-peak machine time
The quiet hours the floor is open but the diary is empty.
Why it's safer
Business trading, without the borrowed money.
Most trade exchanges quietly let the owner/operator run up a large negative trade balance it never has to repay — diluting the value of every other member’s credits. Silvatree is built so that can never happen.
We can never owe the network
Silvatree's own accounts have a hard zero floor. We can't hold a negative balance or extend ourselves a line of credit — full stop.
Silva is earned, never printed
A Silva only exists because a real trade happened between two members. It can't be created out of thin air or bought for cash.
A Reserve Fund stands behind you
If a member ever leaves owing, the Reserve Fund absorbs it immediately — so positive balances stay protected whatever happens next.
If we ever wind down, we go last
Our own balance is wiped out first, leaving more in the pot for members. We put the network ahead of ourselves by design.
How we prove it
Our ledger is built so the network always sums to zero.
This isn't a choice — it's how we protect the system, and it's how the ledger was constructed. Here's what that means for your balance.
The network always sums to zero. Every Silva earned is a Silva owed — the whole system balances to nothing, by construction.
No outsized balances. No member is allowed to sit on a large positive or negative position that could destabilise the network.
Silvatree's own accounts are always positive. The company can never hold a negative balance. It can never owe the system. It cannot issue itself Silva — it can only earn it like every other member. Both the rules and the platform architecture enforce this.
These rules are set out in the Silvatree Exchange Terms & Conditions — the rules the whole network runs on.
Straight talk on fees
Three fees. The same for every member.
There are no tiers at Silvatree — no bronze, silver or gold, and no badge attached to how much you trade. Every member pays the same three fees, worked out the same way, and what you pay turns on one thing: how much of your existing spending you decide to route through the network. Charging by size of business would be arbitrary, because a large firm might trade very little and a small one a great deal. A flat fee would mean the smallest members subsidise the largest.
Joining fee
2%
of the spending you declare
- Minimum £200, maximum £6,000
- Paid once, on admission
Monthly subscription
£20
a month, plus 0.2% of your declared spend ÷ 12
- £24.17 a month on a £25,000 declaration
- £20 more in months you put nothing into the network
Transaction fee
6% + 1%
in cash, and in Silva
- Paid by the seller on each exchange
- The 1% in Silva funds the Reserve Fund
That is the whole structure. There is nothing else to pay — no tier to upgrade to, no charge for finding you buyers, and no fee for closing your account.
- ✓All fees are exclusive of VAT.
- ✓We never charge interest on Trading Headroom, and never take security or personal guarantees.
- ✓If a full year of genuine engagement has not delivered, we refund your joining fee.
What members say
From members
“I joined Silvatree 2 months ago and have already accumulated three new clients for my digital marketing services.”
I have been able to go from operating at 50% capacity to 75% and have subsequently been able to use my Silva to pay for a business coach who is helping me to scale my business and attract more clients, as well as paying for my accounting services and bookkeeping.
“As accountants we have experienced a great influx of new clients that we would never have previously had.”
This has increased our bottom line, and enabled us to help many who would otherwise not have had the cash to pay for our services — which means we can pay for many business expenses in Silva that we would otherwise have paid for in cash.
Questions
Print & production: common questions
- What counts as spare capacity for a print or production shop?
- The kit you pay for whether it runs or not: idle press hours, quiet studio and origination time, unbooked wide-format and finishing capacity, and off-peak shifts. An hour the machine doesn't run can never be billed again, so it's exactly what the exchange is for.
- Do we control which jobs we take on?
- Yes. You choose exactly what you run and when, so you can keep the press free for cash work and only fill the gaps and quiet weeks that would otherwise sit idle.
- What can we spend the Silva we earn on?
- On what the shop already buys from other members — paper and consumables, marketing, accountancy, van servicing and machine maintenance. Silva is a unit of account (1 Silva = £1 for your records); it's spending power inside the network, never cash you withdraw.
- Doesn’t taking Silva work undercut our rates?
- No — you're filling machine time that would otherwise earn nothing, not discounting to cash buyers. The lease and the staff are paid either way, so idle hours simply start earning. We walk through the fees, with your numbers, on a suitability call.
Silvatree works across sectors
One model, told through the spare capacity in each industry.
- Hotels & staysMidweek rooms, off-season nights and unsold spa slots.
- RestaurantsQuiet midweek covers and dark private dining rooms.
- Salons & clinicsUnbooked chairs, quiet treatment rooms and slow mornings.
- RetailSlow-moving stock, quiet hours and empty shelf space.
- Media & outdoorUnsold billboards, unbooked airtime and blank pages.
- Trades & servicesGaps between jobs, cancelled bookings and quiet weeks.
- Professional servicesUnbilled hours, bench time and quiet post-year-end weeks.
Find out if Silvatree is right for your business.
Book a free suitability call. We run an expense analysis, share a capacity & profit report, and tell you honestly whether it's a fit — we'll be the first to say if it isn't.
Not ready to join? No pressure. Go on our standby list and we'll get in touch whenever there's business we can send your way.
Not sure yet? Take the 2-minute readiness test.
Short of time? Talk it through with our AI capacity adviser — available 24/7. It'll cover most of what we'd discuss on the call.