DIGITAL PRINTER
“No, you shouldn’t base business plans on upcoming government legislation. You couldn’t plan to build that into any kind of marketing – you just wouldn’t know if it would come off. In terms of Home Information Packs, we’ve not suffered ourselves, but I do think that it is a cruel move on the government’s part if you were in that situation. And consider the client. We have printed on behalf of solicitors and, for them, it is such an expensive process. However, overall, it is more of a problem for the people requesting the products than for us.”
Alan Marshall
Managing director
Paragon Printing
SPECIALIST PACKAGING MANUFACTURER
“We monitor all legislation very closely. Obviously, we deal in a lot of packaging, so we look at the environmental side of legislation and have someone dedicated to analysing it. We have been working very closely with a major retailer to be ready to go with environmentally friendly packaging as soon as possible. We think that is the way packaging legislation is going to go, and even though there may be delays, in the end it will come into force.
Steve Hackett
Business manager
API Group
FINANCIAL PRINTER
“Upcoming legislation is no different from any other prospective business that doesn’t yet exist in that you have to do a risk assessment. Our assessment of HIPs was that there was a good chance that they wouldn’t come about. For anyone to base new equipment purchases on them, they would have to be either very brave or have an alternative source of work to put through those machines. This is not always the case, however; the government has introduced legislation in the past, such as with the so called ‘cow passports’, which led to a very large contract being awarded by DEFRA.”
John Pulford MBE
Chief executive
HenDi Group
COMMERCIAL PRINTER
“We would be unlikely to base a business plan on legislation that wasn’t implemented yet. But it depends on what the legislation is. If it seriously affected our business in any way, then we would take guidance on how to implement the changes and consider how it would affect us, but government legislation tends to drip feed and can take a long time to be put in place. We’re very different from larger organisations in that we can take things on board as they happen and can adapt quite easily.”
Peter Stead
Retail print manager
Formgraphics
