The business, which was established in 1966, marked its 50th birthday at the end of 2016 by holding parties and celebrations for staff to mark the occasion and sending gifts of personalised chocolate bars and personalised Prosecco to customers.
Precision Printing chief executive Gary Peeling, who joined the company in 1986, attributes the firm’s lasting success to its focus on making print simple to use for its customers.
He said: “We appreciate that our customers are changing. For many of our 50 years we dealt with professional print buyers but we are now dealing with customers who don’t know about printing and don’t necessarily need to know about it.
“Particularly in the last five to six years, we’ve worked to really demystify printing and make it simple to use.”
He added: “In 1986 we were still overprinting business cards using hot metal movable type so things have moved on tremendously.
“Now the printing business is digitally-driven and, whereas we had a typesetter or compositor, we now have a software development department and the business is entirely run from a digital front-end, so it’s been a huge transition from that point of view.
“When I first started you’d be lucky to have your estimate in three days. We now print and ship same-day up to 50,000 orders a day in the on-demand space, so there’s been a huge transformation.”
In July this year the company will move its East London operations from its current 3,300sqm Barking site to larger 5,110sqm premises three miles down the road. The relocation will make room for a new packing and mailing service as well as a second new HP Indigo 12000.
The company is currently Beta testing a 12000 which it signed for at Drupa as part of a “double press deal”. Another HP Indigo 10000, installed in 2015, will be upgraded to a 12000 once Beta testing on the new machine is complete, taking the firm’s 12000 fleet to three by the end of this summer.
“The installation of these presses will help with the transfer. New equipment can be installed into the new factory before we start to decommission the existing equipment here and move it across, which will help with continuity,” said Peeling.
The company is also planning to buy new finishing kit in the summer, to help it to further automate its processes.
“Automation has been critical to our success in terms of automating workflow to open up new revenue streams, particularly in the area of mass customisation,” said Peeling.
“In that area we now use robotics to make hardback cases for books and also to wrap and pack orders.”
The business also invested in two LED-UV RMGT (Ryobi) SRA1-format presses for its London site last year.
“For a long time designers have enjoyed designing products with large solid areas of ink and there’s also been a move to using uncoated substrates, which are very fashionable and look beautiful,” said Peeling.
“LED-UV allows us to print those products and for them to be dry immediately. It gives you the speed and function of digital print, but for longer run products.”
The LED-UV presses will underpin a new service that the firm is set to launch this month called TheColourRush.
“This is all about being able to access printing faster as well as a more vibrant result, particularly on uncoated materials. The combination of that LED-UV technology and our new London facility means we’ll be able to produce long-run projects in the same way that we can produce short-run digital projects; on a same-day basis.”
The 167-staff business, which is forecasting sales of £23m in 2017, also has operations in Sunderland and Surrey. The firm’s trade print service, Where The Trade Buys, is its fastest-growing revenue stream, growing by 80% in 2016.
