PrintVend Blog

There’s far more to environmentally friendly printing than just the paper your job is printed on!

Everything from the equipment used during production, the energy which the factory consumes and the method in which your job is transported will have a large impact on your jobs environmental impact.

In 2008 we had an environmental management system implemented by independent organisation Abricon. Details of this can be found here.

Energy

Printing is traditionally an energy intensive operation, however our modern equipment and factory mean our consumption is reduced to an absolute minimum. Furthermore the energy we do use is provided by Ecotricity, the worlds first green electricity company (and located just a couple of the miles down the road from PrintVend!)

Process

Printing can be produced in two main ways, lithographic (using plates & ink) or digital (using a solid/dry ink and without the need for plates). Both have there place, with litho still being the firm favourite for long-run work (5,000+), however with 90% of all print runs now under 5,000 copies digital is becoming a major contender.

There are many reasons digital print is suited to the short-run print market; no plates mean no set-up cost and no wastage to get the job “up to colour” (i.e ready to sell), all of this has to be paid for by the client and makes it cost prohibitive for short-runs. The main environmental impact here is the “wastage”… in order to get the job ready a large number of sheets have to be run through the machine first, this uses time, energy and of course materials (ink & paper).

Digital doesn’t have this “wastage” and the pricing model (no physical set-up cost) means you can choose the exact quantity required.

Paper

OK, we said it isn’t the only consideration, however it is still a large one. The majority (90%+) of PrintVend’s papers are supplied by Howard Smith Paper Group, and the majority of that paper is Regency Gloss or Satin. Regency is produced by Garda Cartiere, and is an FSC approved paper stock, this ensures the forests where the pulp is sourced from are properly mananged.

We use Regency for our Flyers, Leaflets, Posters, Brochures, Calendars and Business Cards.

Stationery is produced usines OnBusiness and Greeting Cards & Postcards are produced using TruCard.

Transport

With the exception of local (GL postcode) deliveries all orders are sent out using UKMail, one of the UK’s premier courier companies.

Using a courier, rather than our own vans, means your order is transported with a vast number of other parcels, cutting down the environmental impact of each individual parcel.

More details on UKMail’s environmental credentials can be found on there website.

As some of you may already know PrintVend initially started purely as a “Reseller” print service, working with designers, brokers and other companies buying print on behalf of clients. Since then we’ve expanded the business to offer a Retail service as well, however the Reseller part of the business still makes up a large proportion of our work.

Over the last two years we’ve built up our reseller service and we now have around 200 clients signed up as resellers.

So why use PrintVend?

In short, service. Resellers rely on their printer of choice to deliver on time, to deliver high quality print, and, when problems occur, to be there to sort them out.

As well as offering telephone and email support from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, most resellers also have one of our teams mobile numbers, so if they have an urgent enquiry they can always get in touch.

We also offer one of the fastest turnaround times available, with a large number of items now available on a 48 hour turnaround as standard.

So, if you’d like to find out how PrintVend can work with your print business get in touch! We’d love to hear from you.

Pricing

Over this weekend (3rd & 4th October) we will be making some changes to our product pricing. Overall the percentage change is very small, and our most popular items (short run flyers, leaflets & business cards) remain either unchanged or may even have decrease in cost.

Longer run flyers/leaflets, posters and booklets/brochures are likely to have the largest changes, however these should all still be upto 20% lower than the market average.

If you’d like a spread sheet showing all the new prices just pop us an email.

Turnaround Times

We’ve always tried to offer one of the quickest turnaround times available and it’s one of the reasons we’ve become so successfull.

From the 6th October we’ll be aiming to dispatch all orders for flat sheet work* placed by Midday the following day. So if you place your order by Midday on Monday and approve your PDF proof (note below) by 5pm we’ll aim to dispatch your order on Tuesday for delivery on Wednesday. This is presuming we’ve received press-ready artwork!

A couple of points:

Flat Sheet Work
This only applies to “flat sheet” work, i.e items that simply need to be trimmed and don’t require any additional finishing, i.e creasing, folding, stitching etc. For folded leaflets please allow an extra day, and for booklets/brochures please allow an extra 2 days. For any other items please email us to check turnaround times.

PDF Proofs & Artwork
In order to benefit from these turnaround times we require press-ready PDF files for printing. These must be at the correct size, allow for bleed and use correct CMYK colours. If we receive correct files by midday we will send you a Rasterized PDF proof by 3pm, as long as this is then approved by 5pm your job will be dispatched the following day. Simple!

Customer Service

We’ve always tried to offer excellent customer service and, to further improve on this, from 6th October we’ll be offering telephone and email support from 8am to 6pm (currently 9am-5pm).

Christmas

We know it’s a long way off but we’re already busy printing Calendars and Greetings Cards. Please don’t leave your job until the last day of December as we may not be able to get it back to you in time for the Christmas break!

Yesterday we received our 3,000th order since we launched PrintVend.net at the beginning of October 2007.

Since then we’ve taken on new staff, new equipment and within the next year it’s likely we’ll be moving to new premises.

We’ve also made major changes to the website during this time and we’re now on the 3rd version of the site.

The growth of the site has increased rapidly over the past few months and in the coming weeks it will transferred onto a new server to allow for further traffic without an impact on the site performance.

As always we’d welcome any comments Print or PrintVend related and I look forward to the next 3,000 orders.

You may have noticed some pretty major changes to the PrintVend website over the last couple of days. We’re hoping the new site should make it even easier to order your print online and we’ll be adding some exciting new services to the site as well.

To accompany the new site we’ve relaunched our Blog which we hope should give an insight into the world of PrintVend. We’ll be giving information on print processes, artwork, the industry in general and how to make the most from your print as well as giving regular PrintVend news.

If you have any thoughts on the new site or blog feel free to leave a comment!