COMMERCIAL PRINTER
Leslie Manning, managing director, Printflow
"Environmental accreditations have revolutionised our business. It has cost us to get them and we employ someone three days a week to handle that side of the business, but it has definitely been worth it. It took me a long time to buy into all of this. The change in the attitude of my staff has been remarkable. They now seem to have more pride in both the quality of the product and the factory they work in. When I took over the business, things were tough and a competitor showed me the accreditations they had achieved. I asked what he was going to do with them. He said: "I'm going to hit you over the head with them and take your customers."

DIRECT MAIL PRINTER
Saul Whitford,  director, Pepper Communications
"It's about foreseeing the return on investment you'll get from going through the administrative process and that's the difficult thing. You now need FSC/PEFC certification and the ISO 14001 accreditation in order to stay competitive, but it can prove expensive with all of the consultation fees involved. If you employ someone in that role, or train someone up to handle that work, it can have both time and cost implications. We're aiming to become ISO accredited by September and we've had people coming and going with fees cropping up here and there. But, in the long run it's worth it as it'll make us more competitive in the marketplace."

STATIONERY PRINTER
Alasdair Browne, director, Abbot Print
"The printer has to work out what it is worth to them to get it. Around £1,200 is probably about right - although all accreditation bodies roughly charge the same. A bigger company would get charged more as there will be more work to do. However, the annual turnover bit is the interesting issue. If you look at the FSC website, you will see that they voted to double the fee last November or December at their AGM. The fee is based specifically on paper product turnover, so if a company can prove that a certain percentage of their turnover is made up of non-print products, then it may drag them into a lower turnover category."

CERTIFICATION CONSULTANT
Jon Stack, scheme manager, Print and Media Certification
"Not necessarily. We run a group scheme for UK printers to become certified. We have a large number of clients that are members of the certified group and they have the same opportunity to sell certified print as an organisation with a single certification. The group is open to any paper, publishing or print company with 15 or fewer employees. We have a single cost arrangement which includes our fees (for the assessment and group membership), all expenses and the annual accreditation fee (payable to the FSC) is combined and run as a monthly payment scheme."