I first met Peter Andreou six years ago at a Polestar
bash. Barry Hibbert introduced him, and described him as “a future chief
executive of Polestar”. Intriguing, no?
This is the sort of snippet that I tend to squirrel
away in one of the many pockets of my print anorak. One never knows when such
things will come in handy.
To say that next year is going to be a busy one, events-wise, is
something of an understatement.
It’s 188 days until Drupa 2012. Before we burst into song as the big one kicks off in
Dusseldorf, it’s a mere 117 days until Fespa Digital in Barcelona in February. In March it’s the 25th anniversary show for Sign & Digital UK. And
we at PrintWeek will be busy in Miami during March, producing the Show Daily at
the Graphics of the Americas expo and conference.
It’s madness on my part to single out a PrintWeek Award
winner for special attention, so naturally that’s what I’m about to do.
Rah for all our champions, of course, but a particular rah
for little Piccolo Press.
It’s the PrintWeek Awards tonight. Very much looking
forward to seeing lots of lovely print people in their finery this evening. You
do scrub up nicely!
Without wishing to sound gushing or trite, I can
honestly say that being involved with the awards is a really uplifting experience.
The industry overall has been going through such a torrid time, it’s a complete
breath of fresh air to experience the flip side.
Alastair Watson’s comments about commodity printing
brought to mind Mrs Merton’s famous question to Debbie McGee: “So, what
first attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”
Watson works for what is ostensibly the world’s largest
printing group, a multi-billion dollar turnover giant that bestrides the globe,
and where business is all about scale and reach.
By way of a brief follow-up to yesterday’s blog about issues with the quality of recycled waste streams, I subsequently had a most
illuminating conversation with Will Stone at UPM about the firm’s new materials
recovery and recycling facility (MRF) at Shotton.
Last night’s Dispatches
programme on Channel 4, about Britain’s rubbish crisis in the making, was
eye-opening.You can watch it again here.
It outlined concerns over the
co-mingling of waste to be recycled, whereby paper, glass, plastic and metals
are mixed up upon collection and subsequently separated at giant MRF
facilities, and it was easy to see why.
When I saw St Ives’ results yesterday, and the big improvement in profitability therein, I thought “gosh, those high margin data businesses must be flying”. Upon closer inspection that turned out not to be the case. More than 95% of St Ives’ turnover in the last year came from print, and 98% of the operating profit.
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