According to my reckoning congratulations are in order for a very special achievement.

Readers may recall that taking on the top job at Polestar’s Sheffield gravure factory seemed to involve negotiating a particularly tricky revolving door. Said door duly spat out a succession of managing directors in pretty short order. This was hardly an ideal situation for the group’s flagship greenfield site, and when former Greaves man Andy Reynoldson was appointed managing director at the beginning of last year he was the plant’s fifth MD in four years.

Well by my calculations, as of this month Reynoldson becomes Sheffield’s longest-serving MD. Congratulations Andy! I don’t want to jinx him by saying this (“curse of PrintWeek”, anyone?), but it does seem that Polestar has at last found the right man for the job, with Reynoldson putting the expertise he gained at Greaves to good use, and Sheffield running smoothly and gaining plaudits from customers.

If I was Barry Hibbert I’d be giving him a big kiss and a bunch of flowers. Perhaps Andy is lucky that I’m not.

The other noteworthy thing about the Sheffield setup is that Polestar’s choice of 3.8 metre wide presses is looking increasingly savvy in a world of falling paginations where flexibility is really coming to the fore. Word on the streets is that the 4.3 metre variants favoured by Prinovis are half a metre too far.