That was one of the findings to come out of Piras Strategic Print Procurement conference, held at Chelsea Village in London last week.

Some 70 attendees heard from a variety of speakers, including representatives from print buying firms, consultants and print management companies.

Emap group production director Andy Franks stressed that it was essential to have a good working relationship with suppliers.

Both parties should be able to work together to improve results, he said. But there was no point in setting targets for suppliers if things were not correct in-house.

Piras manager for operations and logistics consulting Martin Dean revealed the results of a recent e-mail survey, which questioned 17 top UK firms.

The results showed that out of a total print and packaging spend of 410m, some 31m was being spent with print management companies. Dean said that while print management was still in the minority it was continuing to grow, with the use of e-commerce becoming an increasingly growing element.

Nearly 40% of firms were now buying print abroad, mostly in Western Europe, spending 33m, according to the findings.

Sarah Longstaffe, purchasing manager for travel group TUI showed how a group purchasing division reduced TUIs cost base by 100m (150m).

The firm produces more than 100m brochures annually, which is over 50,000 tonnes of paper. Longstaffe said a rationalisation of the groups paper purchasing achieved savings of 20%.

Three major pan-European paper suppliers were selected to reduce the groups supply, along with one preferred print and a print management company also being selected.

Other speakers included representatives from npower, Vodafone and John Brown Citrus Publishing.

Story by Andy Scott