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You are here: News and Events > Latest News > AlphaGraphics North East £4m investment: Pindar | |||||||
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AlphaGraphics North East makes £4m investment
AlphaGraphics North-East, a group of franchised print businesses is about to undertake a major restructure and investment campaign. In terms of Client benefits, Group MD Sean Costigan believes that the already ISO accredited quality will be further improved but more importantly the turnaround speeds on most orders will be improved greatly allowing much tighter service level agreements with Clients. The business has recently produced a three year business plan and will be making improvements at its main production hub in Stockton-on-Tees as well as reviewing equipment, staffing and operations at each of its five sites across the North-East. The £6m turnover business has recently undertaken what will be a £4 million programme that will include the updating of equipment across many areas of the business: •Digital Print – A major contract has been signed with Xerox, which includes the updating of many of the firms digital print engines along with the addition of iGen3 technology offering cutting edge quality and sophistication. The company has one of the largest fleets of digital print engines in the North of England in both Colour and Black & White. •Traditional Litho Print – A full audit has been undertaken and the investment programme in this area of the business is about to be undertaken at the firm's 22,000sq/ft facility in Stockton-on-Tees. •Finishing & Mailing – Extensive investment is being undertaken to bring the finishing and fulfilment departments in line with the latest industry standards and to satisfy demand created by the upgrading of production equipment across the business. This will include the addition of specialist digital finishing equipment both on-line and off-line as well as three new automated mailing lines. •Systems – The business is in the process of implementing a £100k+ upgrade of its computer networks and MIS system, this has been happening over the last two months and all will be up and running by October 1st. •Technology – A major investment has been made in a full suite of XM Pie software to allow the business to produce highly personalised creative client communication across a multi-channel marketing environment. This means that the firm is now supplying creative client communication in print, e-mail, SMS and via personalised web pages (PURLS) •Display Print – The business has successfully developed its poster, POS and display printing business over the last two years and will be doubling capacity over the next six months in this area. •E-Commerce – The AlphaGraphics on-line ordering system has been providing facilities for Clients to manage print since 1999 but further investment means that the business is now providing state-of-the-art, tried-and-tested solutions to over 40 major clients. There will be a full management restructure which will see a number of key people in the business change their current general roles into much more specialist activities. The company believes that this will allow further growth and profitability to be accelerated. ISO14001 environmental accreditation has been in place for a number of years and the company is now pushing towards FSC accreditation and reduction of the carbon footprint of our clients print production. AlphaGraphics within the North East currently operates from 5 locations across the region, Stockton, Sunderland, Newcastle, Durham and within The Wilton Centre, Redcar.
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