Howitt Group

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :26/07/2007 15:53:09

Howitt, one of the country’s oldest established printers, and a family business, has become a leader in modern mailing solutions after investment and close engagement with its blue chip customers.

Written by John O’Hanlon & produced by Kiron Chavda

The last 40 years have definitely seen more changes in printing technology than the preceding seven centuries – take it from someone who has seen Monotype and Linotype machines in action! Howitt of Nottingham has experienced much of that change since it was set up nearly 170 years ago. It is a fact that of the hundreds of small, local printing operations that existed not so long ago, the ones that are still around are the ones that grasped technological change rather than reacted to it, have diversified, and have exploited niche opportunities.

The Howitt Group was acquired in 2004 by its present CEO Nick Dixon who reorganised it as three entities, Howitt Ltd, Lateral Group and Dialogue Solutions following the acquisition out of administration of the American Direct Communications company Vertis, and a digital business that now turns over £3 million annually, double the amount at the time of acquisition in 2004.

Significant investment

By far the largest part of the organisation is the Sutton-in Ashfield factory run by Managing Director Gurdev Singh, who works closely – indeed seamlessly, he says – with the managing directors of the other two affiliate businesses, and which turns over £46 million annually. It is a state-of-the art plant has been purpose built for the production and handling of all types of direct marketing as well as the printing of brochures, magazines, catalogues and marketing related materials.

Following £6 million investment since 2004 the plant is equipped with the latest web- and sheet-fed presses, which run six days a week and can produce over 100 million personalised mail packs p.a. and in excess of 400 million personalised one-piece mailers per year for a predominantly blue chip client base that includes banks, building societies and major retailers and charities.

Digital printing, where the image is transferred direct to the paper without a plate and can be changed at any point in the run, is clearly more than just a buzzword. Gurdev Singh admits that as the technology moves to accommodate high volume colour work it will take the place of offset. However for the time being Howitt’s Sutton-in Ashfield plant is better able to deal with the large volumes its customers demand, and has the ability to be remarkably flexible.

It has had to be, says Gurdev. “My team here in Nottingham, especially the people on the shop floor often say to me, ‘If it is all going to go digital, then what is going to happen to us?’ I always reply with the same answer – that the company’s long history tells us that if we are able to adapt to the market, people will always want print in some form or another, so our job is to move with the times. We are led by our clients.

Rapid market changes

Even over the last 18 months, he says, the market has changed. “A couple of years ago, if we did a mailing of a million, there may have been two cells in it, for example ‘women’ and ‘men’. These would have been bulked together to get the postal discount. Now, because the banks and people like us who help them with their intelligence, can split their lists and profile and model them, they might split the mailing into ten targeted packages of 100,000. Each would get different inserts, even with different images.

” Now, he says, the mailing can be printed with all these elements and enclosed much more selectively than ever before – for example data streaming can not only distinguish between men and women, but between smokers and non-smokers, different income brackets, postcodes or professions to name but a few profiles. Using LCR (least cost routing) barmark/OCR reading cameras can control the content of the entire mailing ‘on the fly’ rather than in separate runs.

In the last year Howitt has concentrated on innovation rather than investing in more capacity, he continues. “There’s already overcapacity in the industry. We want to develop cleverer products.” For example, it’s known that an addressed envelope with a stamp gets a better response than an envelope with a window. So Howitt’s in-house engineering department created a machine that can stick on the stamp, individually address the envelope and cancel the stamp. This didn’t involve anything new, just making existing units work together in a different way.

Another example involves postcards, which are increasingly being used by clients because they can be sent out very quickly if there is a special promotion, and they don’t carry any enclosing costs. Most printers can handle this sort of work as long as the card is not heavier than 190 gsm (grammes per square metre) but few can handle large scale mailings on heavier card. However clients were asking for more durable cards that people wouldn’t discard so readily, so Howitt came up with a machine that can take board up to 350 gsm, which brought in orders for millions of cards from clients like Debenhams.

An industry benchmark

Gurdev Singh likes to show off his factory to potential customers. Even if they don’t understand the technicalities, they are invariably surprised by the cleanliness of the place, especially if they have seen other printing works. “We are very strict about keeping the place clean,” he says. “Printing presses normally require a licence from the local council to control the emission of noxious gases from the process – ours has told us we don’t need one because before anything is emitted from the building it goes through treatment process to remove them. We want to be green for reasons of corporate responsibility of course but it makes good business sense as well. We want to be a benchmark in the industry. We don’t necessarily want to be the biggest but we want to be the best.”

Here our solvents are recycled. We had a visit from a major bank three weeks ago and they were shocked at the cleanliness of our site. We’re very proud of that. It’s part of the quality that we profess in our industry. I was very pleased. Couple of them had been to printing works before and governing mutual printing and manufacturing was a very dirty process. It’s not like that here. We recycle whatever we can. Because we use heat to dry the ink on the Presses you normally needed a certificate from the council because you’re emitting noxious gases but our local council has said to us that we do not need one because of the way we treat the air. The gases are connected cleaned and it’s like a catalytic converter really.

The Post Office’s introduction of proportional pricing earlier this year created problems for companies sending out large format mail, but at the same time it created opportunities because it has encouraged firms to combine items. By including leaflets with poly-wrapped items like catalogues and brochures they can get out more material to the customers for the same cost. So Gurdev would like to equip his mail room with two poly-wrapping machines to bring that capability in house, ahead of major investment that will become necessary by 2008 to replace six machines coming to the end of their productive life. By and large his own printing operations are up to date, he says, and this year the emphasis will be on consolidation.

Additionally the aim will be to maximise opportunities by leveraging our customer relationships by personalised digital printing, high volume printing and e-marketing divisions work smoothly together. Earlier in the year Dialogue Solutions purchased a Xerox Igen machine, together with the full suite of XMPie software and also two Xerox 8160, wide format colour printers, which are capable of printing posters and banners up to 60 inches in width, by 50 foot in length. Gurdev and the Howitt Board have just approved purchase of £300,000 of specialised equipment as attachments to the Web personalisation systems that will allow mailings to be personalised in two or three colours.

Quality and innovation

What really differentiates Howitt, though, is its quality. In 2005 the firm won the Print Week Printer of the Year and Direct Mail Printer of the Year awards, and the customers certainly agree.

To repeat, there are a lot fewer printers than there used to be, margins are very tight, and only the smartest survive. “A former boss of mine once told me ‘the more things you can do to a piece of paper the more money you’ll make’,” concludes Gurdev Singh. “You make a small margin from printing, but if you personalise it you make a little more; if you add some glue or some fragrance you make a little more again, and if you then put it into an envelope and mail it out for the client you make a little more still. Every bit you can charge for adds something to your contribution and your margin. That is why Howitt went into direct mail in the first place, and it keeps us ahead of the game today.”

A speculative venture is sometimes a good way to mop up spare capacity, and Gurdev’s pet project at present is to design and print a series of pop-up books for children to educate them on environmental responsibility, healthy diet and the like. He would like to obtain some government grant funding, but even if he can’t he still intends to go ahead with the project. “It’ll be produced on 50% post consumer waste recycled paper and 50% FSC – because 100 percent recycled takes a lot of energy to make and isn’t necessarily better than sustainable woodpulp. Even if we have to give them out free, the cost will be minimal because it will take up spare capacity on the machines, and of course it will carry our branding and at the same time provide our people with a valuable project. I do firmly believe in corporate social responsibility and want to see it as part of our culture.