Horner Brothers Printers was formed in 1982 by brothers Dennis and Trevor Horner now chairman and production director respectively.

"There will be around 450 people attending, including customers, suppliers, our staff and their children. We have a great set of customers and were delighted they will be sharing the celebration with us," said Dennis Horner.

The company has diversified into a number of areas complementary to its core business of forms production and management, and the group is now made up of five specialist companies. Its customer base embraces a long list of blue-chip clients, including BT, Barclays, HSBC, Inland Revenue and Stanley Tools.

"We were pioneers in contract management, and write all our own software in fact we have eight full-time people working on software," Horner added. "We have had web-enabled ordering for four years."

Horner believes that the companys ability to tailor a system to suit individual customers is "absolutely unique".

"We planned for it and we were in a brave place for quite a time while we were getting the solution right," he added.

"In forms the easy stuff is the big stuff personalised and bespoke is much more difficult. We can be handling 50,000 separate transactions a month that range from a single business card to 2m A4s in 48 hours. Nobody else is capable of handling this sort of contract."

The company has trebled in size over the past two-and-a-half years, and is projecting sales of 14m this year. It employs 166 staff.

Story by Jo Francis