The 10-staff company has partnered with Bristol Sport, which oversees the commercial interests of its affiliated clubs, including Bristol City and Bristol RUFC, to produce promotional and merchandising material.

The contract started at the end of July and covers a range of printed materials, including team sheets, menus, car parking passes and flyers.

Panda Press sales director Hannah Tunnicliffe hopes that the contract with Bristol Sport will be followed by similar deals with top-tier football clubs. Panda Press has been supplying print materials to Stoke City FC since 2008. 

“We are looking to have partnerships with more Premier League clubs in the future,” said Tunnicliffe. “We understand the business very well and can give good advice on logistics.” 

Panda Press is keen to expand and is open to doing even more work for Bristol Sport, which has basketball and motor sport teams in addition to their football and rugby clubs. Bristol Sport is also managing the city's Ashton Gate stadium rebuild.

“As we grow through word-of-mouth and happy clients we can take on even more scale,” said Tunnicliffe. 

The deal is in line with Panda Press’ business goals, which include increasing staff, increasing turnover, gaining more high-profile clients and pushing ahead with their investment programme.

Panda Press recently bought a new five-colour Hans Gronhi B3 press, which was installed last June. It previously used a four-colour Ryobi SRA3 press.

“The quality is better and it’s more economical,” said Tunnicliffe. “It provides increased capacity and good colour accuracy, and it’s more automated. The press is longer than the previous one so we had to reconfigure the floor layout, but apart from that there were no problems.”