Managing director Allan Morrison, who founded the company in 1984, will retire at age 75 after seeing the Irvine commercial printer’s last orders fulfilled in December.

Morrison told Printweek that the business’ turnover, of around £350-400,000, had dropped by about half during Covid, and not since recovered. 

He said: “38 years we’ve been going, it’s a wee bit sad.

“Another 10 years would have been fine, but there you go, it wasn’t to be.”

A younger him, he added, “somebody with a bit more drive and enthusiasm and dynamism,” might have been able to pick the business back up, but the time had come to set down tools.

Morrison has agreed the sale of Fasprint’s equipment to an unnamed buyer and will then sell the 560sqm site, which the company owns, making sure that all suppliers are paid.

Morrison has been at the heart of the company’s operation since 1984.

He said: “I started the business just doing it myself, one person and a small unit; one print machine and a wee guillotine.”

From that one press – a Ryobi 3200 single-colour – Morrison built up a business that at its height employed nine staff to supply Ayrshire with graphics, printing and finishing services.

The process of building the business, he said, had been a “pleasure” that had also allowed him to work alongside his three children.

Fasprint’s five current employees, Morrison’s children included, will be made redundant as the company winds down operations.

One highlight of Morrison’s years in the industry was printing Kilmarnock FC’s match-day programme, which Fasprint did for 27 years.

“We never let them down once, in all that time,” said Morrison.

“Sometimes the copy came to us very late, but we still always managed to get the job done.”

Losing Kilmarnock as a client shortly before the pandemic was a blow for Fasprint.

“We didn’t lose customers because of price or quality or anything like that,” said Morrison, explaining that many clients had cut down on print work after digitalising their communications, and advances in office printing had rendered job-runs of stationery obsolete.

“You’re relying on bespoke stuff, leaflets and stuff like that. But your everyday jobbing work, a lot of that has disappeared.”

A modernised web store, set up in an attempt to regain business from online printers, was little help for the business: “It’s really been a disaster, as far as that was concerned. Very, very little [work] came off it.”

Morrison likewise hired a salesperson for three months; he said: “That didn’t work out either.

“It was just getting to the stage where there wasn’t much more I could do [... closure] was the final decision.”