The new report, The Standard, is the first time the German-owned gravure printer has published a site-specific report for its Liverpool facility.

It covers a range of environmental policies at the business including paper, ink, waste, recycling, energy use, and CO2 emissions.

The site’s managing director, Richard Gray, said “significant improvements” had been made at the plant due to a maximum efficiency, minimum waste policy.

Gravure’s use of the solvent toluene has placed the process in the environmental firing line in the past. The Prinovis report states that the Liverpool facility has, at 99.5%, achieved “the highest level” of solvent recovery in the sector.

The factory’s closed-loop system recovers the solvent for re-use. The site also has a combined heat and power plant (CHP).

Prinovis Liverpool has ISO 14001 accreditation and became the first gravure printer in the UK to achieve the EU Ecolabel standard earlier this year.

In 2013, the amount of tonnage produced at the £63.8m turnover facility fell from 155,000 to 138,000 tonnes. It had said it expected volumes to increase over the course of 2014 and Gray confirmed this had been the case.

“We were back to about 155,000 tonnes this year and expect to grow that a bit next year,” he said. “Generally we are seeing the retail and mail order segment slightly more buoyant this year than last, both in terms of pagination and volumes.

“We have also picked up work from mainland Europe as well, in particular for a Danish customer who is very particular about environmental performance and the Ecolabel,” Gray added.

“We are looking into 2015 with a degree of optimism – there is a clear ROI from printed products and the majority of retail and mail order clients get that.”

Prinovis UK also has a newly-launched standalone website at www.prinovis.co.uk, whereas previously it had been incorporated into the group site.

The environmental report is downloadable from the website.