A lot has happened at Day International in the last year. The blankets and pressroom chemicals company became part of the venture capital backed Flint Ink group in June, something that the organisation is still getting to grips with. And since then the new owners have approved a huge investment in the Day blanket plant in Dundee swiftly followed by the acquisition of HydroDynamic Chemicals, the Sussex based provider of washes and eco-friendly pressroom chemicals. On the one hand this means that Dermot Healy, managing director (Europe) of Day International, has to get used to the new reporting systems and sets of meetings that come with being part of a larger organisation, and on the other he has to assimilate a new business into his own. If he’s fazed by this, he does not show it.

“There were a few good reasons for us to buy HDP,” he says. “One was that HDP was a good ‘green’ brand which is of interest to our Varn business. Varn has been successful at developing speciality chemicals and has won a Queen’s Award for this and HDP is a smaller version of that. Where Varn is strong in web, HDP is strong in sheetfed so takes us into a sector we haven’t been strong in before. HDP also has distribution and warehouse locations across the UK which we could use for our other products. And it has a strong waste management side.

“This is something that we have looked at building for a few years: now we are getting to grips with it and thinking about how we can roll it out, not just in the UK but across Europe.”

The first step of moving manufacturing from HDP’s Shoreham-by-Sea premises to the very much larger Varn factory at Irlam near Manchester has already been taken. A site in Shoreham will remain as Day wants to retain HDP’s
experienced staff.

There will also be the benefit of synergies between HDP and Day overseas. Where Varn has expanded internationally through creating manufacturing sites to back up sales across the world, including a joint venture with Heidelberg in China, HDP chose to licence its products and has a network of distributors. These might become channels for other chemicals and for Day’s suite of blanket brands – Duco, Day and DavidM.

There is also the UK network to consider. Day, although it has a team of 70 sales staff spread from “Moscow to Manchester”, has never had a distribution channel. Now it has, with warehouses and an associated customer base. Healy has to consider whether to retain and build on this, or to part with it, or some mixed option. “We really need to understand that business first,” he says. Across Europe Day has used its own sales people to drive both direct sales and through distributors which have been carefully supported over the years. When Flint came looking for a pressroom chemicals partner to its inks business, this was the cherry on top.

The meetings and reporting structures that the new owners have imposed, no doubt at the behest of CVC Capital Partners which owns Flint, take some getting used to for a man who has for 12 years been in charge of an expanding business. If this is the down side, the benefits have been seen in the support for investment at Dundee, the acquisition of HDP and another which is in the offing. The deal has also tilted the focus of the business from the US to Europe where Flint, thanks to its inks acquisitions in recent years, is stronger. “It means that we look to Stuttgart and Frankfurt as our natural home,” he says. “And the Flint people have bent over backwards to welcome us.”

The two have retained separate identities, only Day’s Rotec flexo sleeves business moving to a specialist flexo division comprising plates and inks as well. This is just as well for Healy as both Sun and Huber are good customers for the blankets Day produces, and there is no reason why they should not continue like this. Not far from the huge ink plant at Stuttgart is Day’s blanket conversion facility at Reutlingen. A move was considered, but rejected and the decision respected.

There will be separate stands at Drupa, though as much because Day had already paid for its stand before the Flint deal. And there is money to boost sales teams in Germany and France.

Between blankets and chemicals, Healy reckons that Day has more than 20% of the UK market, but only 10% in some key European countries like Germany and France, let alone the rest of the world. “There’s plenty of scope to continue to grow in double digits for the next decade,” he says.