Pollards comprises Exeter-based 240-year-old family business William Pollard & Company; Redrok, a merchandise and workwear company based in Plymouth that was acquired by Pollards around four months ago; and Buckingham-based BCQ, which was sold to Pollards out of administration via a pre-pack deal in August 2023.
Litho and digital production will be concentrated in Exeter while creative services, national sales, wide-format, and mailing will be led from Buckingham. Redrok, which offers a wide range of services to customers via its tech platform BrandHub 360, will remain based in Plymouth.
The group currently employs just over 150 staff, with just under 100 of those working in Buckingham. It said the aim of the consolidation was to improve efficiency, enhance services to customers, and enable further investment in growth.
The changes are expected to be fully complete by May 2025 and will result in a number of job relocations or redundancies, primarily in production roles, although the number of roles affected have not been disclosed as the business said it was still having conversations with staff. The firm said services to customers will be unaffected.
Ben Pollard, chairman of Pollards, said: “We’ve been printing since 1781 and my job is to make sure we’re still printing in 2081 by building us into a £100m business. These changes will enable us to better serve our customers, better reward our employees, and better invest in our future growth.”
Pollards has appointed Mark Wiseman as managing director of the consolidated operating business, while Dave Mace continues as CEO of Pollards’ holding company and as finance director for the group as a whole.
Wiseman was previously operations and technical director at BCQ, and then managing director of that business.
He told Printweek: “What we’re doing is effectively creating these centres of excellence. Plymouth will be our merchandise and workwear centre of excellence, Exeter will be our commercial print centre of excellence, and Buckingham will be our wide-format, mailing, creative, and customer experience centre of excellence.
“The [BCQ] acquisition took William Pollard in a better, stronger position. It’s a very tough industry, market sector, and economy at the moment but the acquisition has done well, it’s just about taking the best of the group and strengthening the business even further so we can invest, grow and […] look after the people as well as look after the customers.”
In terms of equipment setup, Wiseman added there would be some kit moving, some kit replaced, and investment in new machinery to improve its services in certain areas.
The business currently operates two Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 75 litho presses – one conventional and one LE-UV, Ricoh and HP digital equipment, and Agfa machinery on the wide-format side. The group is looking at wide-format as a growing area that is ready for new investment.
Wiseman added: “The BCQ name will remain but what we’ll do over the course of the next 12 months is become more under the William Pollard name, because obviously there’s a huge amount of heritage with Pollards. So over the period of time we are likely to come more under that group umbrella.”
Current group turnover is around £15m and the aim with this process is year-on-year growth of 20%.
The group serves a wide range of customers and sectors but is particularly strong in the charity, retail, and leisure areas.
