RNLI print manager Sonia Harris has more than 20 years’ experience in print and joined the organisation in late 2005. As well as managing a £900,000 annual budget for outsourced print, she runs an in-house digital pressroom, which has a turnover of around £225,000 and seven staff.
She says: “We print anything from 10 posters for an event to 5,000 postcards, from variable data letters of 1,000 supporters up to 30,000. We also produce the training manuals for the RNLI Lifeboat College. Materials are printed B1 and B2 sheetfed.”
In addition to this, the charity’s Lifeboat magazine has a circulation of 250,000 and is printed web-offset with a run of 260,000 on a quarterly basis. Print requirements also include point of sale, direct mail, stickers and stationery.
All the organisation’s printing is done in the UK. Scarborough-based Pindar produces the charity’s web work, while a host of Dorset printers are on board including B1 and large-format firm JPS Group, B1 specialist Lookers Design Print, and B2 firm Pressplus. Reflex Printed Plastics in Kent produces plastic and vinyl printing.
Harris argues that keen pricing is not the only factor she looks for when working with printers. She says she looks for “honesty, good quality and services together with good rates”, and “someone on the end of the phone who you can trust”.
As an in-house digital printer, Harris says that the RNLI is beginning to do more short runs and this is likely to continue in the near future.
She is also looking at upping the organisation’s environmental efforts. She says: “I would like us as an organisation to go more green and am looking to the future and recycled stocks.”
RNLI FACTFILE
Established 1824
Headquarters Poole, Dorset
Staff 1,000 paid, 40,000 volunteers
Annual print spend £900,000 on outsourcing, plus additional in-house printing worth around £225,000
Suppliers Pindar, JPS Group, Lookers Design Print, Press Plus, Reflex Printed Plastics, Proximity, Whitewater
Source: RNLI
