WHEN FOUR YEARS AGO MARK HANDFORD, then managing director of East Sussex Press, bought Beacon Press, the company just down the hill from Crowborough, eyebrows were raised. Beacon was a high-profile company, a flagship of environmental printing that produced work of the highest quality as well as the highest ecological integrity. ESP by contrast was a commercial printer fighting in the same pond as many similar sheetfed businesses.

It had done so successfully, rising to sales of £6 million, and had outgrown the East Sussex Press name. Handford knew his near neighbour and that Mark Fairbrass wanted to sell. It was an opportunity that was too good to miss.

Four years later, both business operations continue to thrive as a group which has become one of the strongest sheetfed print operations in the country.

At the point of merger the two companies had 140 staff combined. That has increased in the past four years to 170 and sales have climbed, from a combined total of £12 million then to around £17 million now. The combination of the two is greater than the separate parts.

The old ESP business has taken the Pureprint name, which is now also the group name, while the Beacon Press brand continues. The group is concentrated in Uckfield, but instead of being squeezed into what had been Beacon’s premises, there is now a second run of three factory units on another part of the industrial estate, and a third site, which is being fitted out as a pick and pack warehouse.

Last year was also marked by investment. The company bought its first 10-colour B1 press, a Speedmaster 102; bought a further six-colour perfecting Speedmaster; installed a Muller Martini Acora perfect binding line and put in a digital printing operation around two HP Indigo 5500s. This year, further press investment is planned to replace some of the older machines. By any reckoning this is a merger that has worked out.

Handford, now chief executive of the group, says: “Four years ago we took the opportunity to acquire Beacon Press. As soon as I came here and started looking into the business I could see that there were some fantastic ideas, but I also found some things that were not so fantastic, which meant there were opportunities.

“I could bring in all the bits that ESP had been good at, such as purchasing. And this made it a win-win from the start. I knew this really could work as a deal.

“ESP had built up some good disciplines and I knew that I could work with everybody at Beacon. I had seen where other businesses had come together and it hadn’t worked out, and was determined not to make those mistakes.”

The immediate issue was one of staff morale and the natural suspicion that arises. This was dealt with by waiting 14 months before bringing the companies together on a single site. By that time, Handford says, the people had come to know each other because they had worked together. When the time came for the Crowborough business to move into Uckfield, it was greeted with open arms and not suspicion.

The ESP business learned from Beacon in return. This was most obviously in environmental areas where, 100 days after the acquisition, it had achieved ISO 14001.

Richard Owers, now business development director, was on the Beacon side of the fence when the merger happened. “This has been a marriage of two businesses,” he says. “And the result has been a much greater range of skills than either of the companies had had previously.”

What Handford has been successful at is retaining the Beacon Press brand as the side of the business dedicated to complex projects. This is typified by The Temple of Flora for The Folio Society, which won the award as the Best British Book in last year’s Book Design and Production Awards. The Pureprint side of the business is aiming for longer-term contractual work. It has signed Essex University on a three-year deal and another three-year deal has seen it extend a relationship with financial consultancy Watson Wyatt to cover the rest of Europe as well as the UK.

The different skill sets in client handling are now cross-marketed to good effect. “We have found that there have been a lot of opportunities thrown at us in recent weeks and months, more than had been the case a year earlier,” says Handford. The state of the market plays a role here because Pureprint has to be considered one of the most stable sheetfed groups around. Where customers chasing a lower price have found that their work has been locked into other companies’ factories when administrators are appointed, this is not likely to happen at Pureprint. With financial services customers especially this is becoming an important consideration. Print management companies too are being more cautious in placing work, choosing stronger suppliers rather than just the lowest price.

Pureprint has been happy to work with the larger print management companies and has noticed the trend. It is this that is driving Handford to look at the press line-up. “These changes in print management have made us refocus. We realised we needed bigger, faster presses and will consequently reshape what we have on the litho side.”

On the digital side, the move to install two Indigos along with Duplo bookletmaking and perfect binding moved Pureprint from a bit player in digital to one where digital is a major strength. The unhurried approach was deliberate. Aaron Archer, group technical manager, is in charge of what he calls a “mini factory within a factory”. He says: “Customers have been waiting for us to put machines in place. We wanted to find machines which would give us the closest look and feel to offset printing, so that we could move jobs from offset to digital in the same workflow with no compromise on quality.”

That quality is something that the group rightly prides itself on. The commitment was present at Beacon and has been spread across the operation. The company prints to ISO 12647-2 as a base standard using a range of tools to measure, calibrate and check the presses and consumables in use. But it is not afraid to move way from the four-colour process where the work demands it. The prepress area will use ISIS software to go beyond the capabilities of Photoshop, for example, where customers need this.

These are likely to be on the Beacon Press side, where the focus is on creative solutions for customers. Pureprint has the focus of business solutions. While the production equipment is shared, customer service teams are particular to one business or the other. This extends to having separate entrances to the factory.

Richard Osborne, Pureprint managing director explains: “We have always invested in customer service, because as the information from customers comes in it has to be put together. That drives the production system.

“There is a customer service team of 20 who are the customer’s experience of the company. They therefore need to know how to handle all types of print, now including digital printing and how to tackle a case-bound book.”

The approach is different according to the doorway into the group. Those working for Beacon need to have an affinity for dealing with clients who have a strong creative bias but may not be as organised as those coming from the procurement side. “Customers need to deal through people who think like they do. These are different ways of looking at print,” says Owers.

“On top of this we need somehow to have a culture where people are up for change. You have to give your customers what they want rather than what you can easily produce,” adds Osborne.

“We just have to be good at what we are doing: that’s the people and skill sets of the business. When the market gets tough, if yours is the product that looks a little better, the business that is pushing its paper, ink and colour skills wins the business; and the industry is the winner because we are all getting better at what we are doing.

“Our mission now is to make sure we have one of the best digital printing companies in the UK. As we move into fulfilment we want to be blindingly good at fulfilment. There is no point in doing it otherwise.”

Each of the directors has a sales line responsibility which keeps them aware of the changing dynamics on the purchasing side, so providing a first-hand basis for any changes and decisions. Says Handford: “When any of our people go to a customer it is about finding the pain points that they have. For one recently the biggest pain was producing his business cards. We provided a web to print solution for the business cards and as a result won the marketing material.

“The problem is that the people purchasing print today are not the old-school print buyers with lots of experience and knowledge. They do not have the training and don’t really know the technicalities, so we have to look after them. However, once we get them to visit the factory we tend to get work from them.”

The Pureprint plant is indeed a showpiece of efficient production which would impress any buyer. The environmental ethos permeates every action. All waste is segregated; paper extraction systems are used to pick up trim waste and deliver it to a conveyor; ink is pumped to the new press to replace cartridges or tins which need to be sent for repurposing. There is even a display of bird box and insect refuge designs built from old pallets and roofed in pieces of printing blanket. It’s an indication of the level of engagement with the local community that Pureprint encourages, and which has won it awards.

It is also something that is rising fast on the corporate agenda where corporate social responsibility is being taken very seriously.

“CSR is a massive thing for us,” says Handford, “and is growing all the time. Some clients have whole departments ensuring they adhere to CSR policies. It has become much more than looking at the environment. They want to know much more about us and their job as it is produced.”

The company has also taken to the road to go to clients, staging informative events in London as soft marketing, and running more educational seminars about the environment and some of the new technologies. “We ran one of these in Nottingham recently,” says Owers. “It takes organisation and is something that is only possible when you are a larger business. With a 50-strong business, you simply don’t have the resource to do this.”

He firmly believes that having critical mass is going to be crucial. “Printers in this country need to be bigger to be able to afford the investment. And if you can’t make the investment you will suffer.”

Becoming a bigger business has changed both parts of the business. Each has learned from the other and, more importantly, the directors have grown also. Mark Handford is confident too about the future: “Over the last four years we have learned a lot about running a much bigger business. The building blocks are there to allow us to achieve. We need different skill sets as the company grows and we feel comfortable that we have achieved that. We feel we can run this different business successfully.”