He’s married with two children and loves sports, holidays and reading. He also an aspiring novelist with a book, The Search for Private Flint, available on Amazon’s Kindle store. He's also written a piece about his working life in the industry, which is reproduced below the Q&A.
What is your nickname?
‘Sven’ after Sven-Goran Eriksson on account of my glasses
Why did you get into printing?
I applied for a job as a graphic designer at Bemrose, they had no vacancies and offered me a letterpress apprenticeship
What would be your dream job?
It was professional sportsman – football, golf or tennis – but now it’s a ‘writer’ to get my novels published
What is your dream bit of kit?
Range Rover, all-singing and maybe dancing
Who or what do you hate the most?
Lorries overtaking me and then creating tailbacks
Who do you admire most in the industry?
Jimmy West, he revitalised Bemrose & Sons in the 1970s when he was the manager
What is your favourite saying?
Make hay while the sun shines
What is your favourite album?
Queen’s Greatest Hits
What is your favourite book and what book are you reading at the moment?
The Day of the Triffids and Bring Up the Bodies
What is your greatest luxury in life?
To sit by a pool with a drink and a good book
What is the strangest job you’ve had?
Selling insurance – that’s strange!
What is your greatest ambition?
To have my novels published
Who or what makes you laugh?
My 13-month old grandson, proper comedy
Which celebrity would you like to get out of here? Why?
Any C-list celeb you can think of
Most embarrassing moment?
Karaoke – I’m well known for serenading the girls
Where would you like to be right now?
I’m there: good friends, health and a little money
What’s your worst fashion disaster?
Every occasion I go out with my wife, so she tells me
Which superpower would you like?
To stop people arguing, including myself
Who would be your favourite party guests?
Any sports people
Where would you go if you could time-travel?
Victorian London (my fashion stayed there)
What was your childhood obsession?
Watching Derby County and playing football
What is the worst kind of print?
Terms and conditions, which are always too small to read
How would you like to be remembered?
Like my father, a gentleman
Life is…?
For me, very good
A changing industry
I consider myself very lucky to have chosen a profession, all those years ago in 1970, which has offered me unbroken employment for 46 years since.
I can remember my first day at Bemrose & Sons Company as though it were yesterday. I was indentured as a Letterpress machine apprentice for five years as they, under the guidance of a sergeant major type works manager, gradually bid farewell to a bygone era; railway timetables printed on lumbering two revolution flatbed presses that filled one entire room of the old mill building which had been their home for most of the 20th century. The place was awash with eccentricity; characters: some who fought in the Second World War; many others, who’s childhood memories included blackouts, dank air-raid shelters and post- war rationing, forged their careers and their individuality with Derby’s biggest printing company.
In those days lead times were weeks, sometimes months even, especially in cases like the Stanley Gibbons stamp catalogue. The runs for this were about 40,000, and on the bank of presses printing it each year, we were allowed a full shift to make each 32-page section ready (tissue between thumb and forefinger, paste on the back of the hand) as we patched up all the low rubber stereotypes. Then, the presses trundled along at a maximum speed of 1,500 impressions per hour; five shifts in total (two-and-a-half days) to complete one section. The composing room was upstairs, a long room with each compositor at his station, working single type characters into their ‘sticks’, then into pages before constructing 64 of them together, for timetables, onto a ‘stone’ (a large flat metal surface) before being secured with ‘quoins’ and ‘wooden furniture’. Then they would be bought down to the print room on a large drop down barrow and offered onto the press’s bed, by three men, and then locked on with ‘Dogs’. One other abiding memory; the rollers were made of gelatine and the printers starting at 6.00am had to clear the rats off them before they started.
I have been witness to huge changes in my life, not least those in printing. I left Bemrose in 1980, for a brief period, to print the Ripley & Heanor News on a reel fed letterpress flatbed printing machine that would not have looked out of place in Victorian England. Then, whilst I married a girl who worked at Bemrose and we started a family, I progressed through several companies, leaving a dying letterpress process behind me, to then embrace lithography. I went back to college to study management, to become a fellow of the Institute of Industrial managers, and ultimately to find a position of responsibility with Royden Greene in Derby as their print manager. They had invested heavily in Komori printing presses and then subsequently in a scanner and innovative page assembly. This was to be their undoing.
In an ailing industry, as we progressed through the nineties towards the 21st century, recession, massive outlay on new technology, and customers’ ever tightening budgets dictated a grave yard of failed printers; Royden Greene proved to be just one more.
I was lucky. Before Royden’s inevitable death toll, I was offered an opportunity to return to the presses with Print 4, and here I have remained for 24 years to date. Practically every company where I have worked (this probably doesn’t say too much for me) has closed its doors, including Bemrose. It might, therefore, be in Print 4’s best interests to keep me occupied for as long as they possibly can!
Now though, I can look back with affection as more than half my working life has been spent on the presses at Dabell Avenue. Remarkably, many of those people who were here when I began, or started soon afterwards (and remember Print 4 is a small company with only 28 employees), are still here, some approaching retirement as am I. I believe this says a lot; companies who look after their employees invariably have low turnover of staff.
In those early days an Akiyama Bestech B2 four-colour was churning off sheets, often 24 hours a day, sometimes six days a week, week in week out. We printed huge amounts of point-of-sale and marketing literature for the likes of British Midland Airways, Woolworths, Clarkes and Cadbury’s. Another four colour Bestech was installed at the side of the first, and then after several more years the original press was swapped for a new six-colour with a coater as the work continued to flood in. These were healthy days indeed. And whilst the presses worked on tirelessly, the scenery within the factory changed: Mezzanine floors were taken down; offices disappeared and reappeared elsewhere and less than two years ago, a new mezzanine floor materialized in a different area above the presses for the purpose of hand finishing and fulfilment.
Rewind ten years, back to those halcyon days and a brand new B1 five colour Extreme spread itself the entire length of the factory floor, a kind of flagship for the company, taking over that mantle from the smaller six-colour B2. Fast forward again, to almost four years ago, and as the six-colour reached the winter of its life, a decision was taken to replace it with another B1. That is where we are now, the two large presses sitting impressively side-by-side one another, consuming a large area of floor space. Not to mention all the wide format digital presses. Interestingly to note, it would take either of these two presses approximately 5 hours, from the beginning of a make-ready to the completion of a 40,000 print run, as against the two-and-half days of its 1970 letterpress ancestor.
I often wonder where time has gone. As I look back, each press has created its own era, catering for those customers belonging to its particular time, producing challenges, problems and successes, all filed into a huge library of events which seem to have passed me by like a card magician flicking through a pack of cards, or the fast forward on a remote control. And through all of these changes we were frequently called upon to work long hours; I reflect, upon occasion, I have spent more time at Print 4 with my work colleagues than with my wife.
In recent years however, lead times have diminished, and profit margins along with them. Printing companies are forced into Kamikaze quoting in their efforts to keep presses running and, as marketing moves towards highly impressive, informative websites, we find ourselves immersed into an increasingly competitive market. Files ping through the stratosphere with customers demanding their jobs, sometimes within hours of placing an order but with quality still paramount. Through all of these stormy seas however, Print 4 has not only stayed afloat but maintained a steady course. Even after the founder of the company, Robin Ringham, retired several years ago Matthew Boam and Peter Clark (both of whom have been at the company for many years) stepped up to the helm to continue to navigate us safely onwards.
These days there is less of a need for overtime, circumstances for which, I suspect, the older fraternity are extremely grateful. And, as our present Directors are conscious of the need to keep costs tight, they have thoughtfully presented an opportunity, to those who can afford it, to reduce their hours as they approach retirement. I fall into this category and gratefully accepted the chance to reduce my week to four days when I was 61 and then subsequently, since October 2016, to three days. It does seem a little strange having worked continually since September 1970, but it is enabling me to spend time with my family and my one-year-old grandson, and also to get down to some serious home improvement. It will also, hopefully, set me on a course as an author. I have already written two novels although, in yet another extremely competitive market, that of publishing, it is an almost impossible task to persuade literary agents your work will be profitable. As yet, I remain unpublished, nevertheless, I will persevere: watch this space.
Death had become a way of life for the men in these trenches, although it hadn’t occurred to Daniel he might soon be dead. Rather it was the poignancy of this moment in time. He pulled out the photograph from his top pocket: the pretty girl in the picture was illuminated briefly, by an explosion. He returned it to his pocket, and clasped both hands tightly around his rifle barrel, counterbalancing the excessive weight of kit on his already aching back. One man retched over the sodden duckboards; another shook uncontrollably with fear. The fusillade continued to tear at their ear drums until, inevitably, the minutes closed to seconds, and then to that moment they all feared.
Exert from, The Search For Private Flint Published on Amazon Kindle
Gradually, his eyes adjust. A slither of pale luminescence shows itself. The merest breath of air pricks his skin reminding him of an open window. The colourless, frayed curtain fabric, hung across its length, stirs occasionally, almost undetectably, in a tiny breeze which tugs at its hem like a small child might grab its mother’s dress to gain her attention. He swings his legs over the side of the bed in a room still so black he cannot see a hand placed in front of his face, and cocks his head to one side, like a wolf pricking its ears to the wind.
Exert from, A Deathly Legacy
When I was fifteen and in my final year at school (I wasn’t clever enough to pass my eleven plus or aspire to grammar school) my mum suggested graphic design because art was my best subject at school. Graphic design, in 1970, was much less a part of print than it is today and of course there were no openings, but the apprenticeship they did offer me set me on a life that has proved to be both comfortable and enriched by those people I have worked amongst. I have no complaints, and my time at Print 4, more than a third of my entire life, has been a memorable experience and one for which I doff my cap.
Michael Collins
