Business

Earlier this year British Business Investments announced an additional £15m commitment to Compass Business Finance, taking its total commitment to £30m - the intention being to increase the flow of funding for asset finance products into UK-based smaller businesses operating in the print, packaging and manufacturing sectors. So who is asking for the money, are they getting it, and is this conversation more, or less, likely to make you apply too?

This summer, on 15 June, POPAI UK/Ireland will run its biggest ever sustainability summit - ‘Impact22’.  Topics on the agenda include the greening-up of retail POP and sustainable materials. I talked to chair and sustainability director, Martin Kingdon, to find out where the organisation thinks large-format PSPs
fit into the scheme of things. 

Obvious costs, hidden costs and the need to raise your own prices - Matic Media MD and Print Scotland vice president Richard McCombe considers the implications of all these for print businesses.

Workplace racism has been on the rise for some time now. Tina Chandler, head of employment law at Wright Hassall outlines the legal technicalities of managing racism at work, and how it should be combatted should it ever occur.  

As many large-format digital print businesses continue their transformation to meet the demands of a post pandemic world, I talked with well-known business coach and mentor Chris Jordan about attracting and retaining the right staff for a new era.

Over the course of 2021, Richard Clark of Raccoon has been providing this diary on how his business has coped. Here’s his end of year report and HOPES for the NEW YEAR.

Decisions are the lifeblood of a business, which makes it all the more remarkable that we make so many of them in a disjointed, ad hoc and impulsive fashion. The good news, as American billionaire Warren Buffett likes to point out, is that you only have to get a few of them right, as long as you don’t get too many of them wrong. This guidance might help you improve your success rate.

Earlier this year MacroArt appointed a non-executive chairman to help it realign and grow its business. The Covid pandemic having caused so many PSPs to reassess their operations, I talked with MD Michael Green about the value of bringing in non-executive directors. 

Do you know much about the Made Smarter Leadership programme - and have you considered joining it? If you want to mix with business chiefs from across different sectors to glean insight on smarter manufacturing impacts, perhaps you should.

Many employees want to continue a more flexible approach to their work, having become accustomed over the last year or so. Here, law firm Wright Hassall offers advice for businesses experiencing an influx of such requests.

The Covid-19 pandemic has played havoc with the exhibition calendar as we know only too well, but we’re due to see the return of Fespa Global Print Expo this October. I asked Fespa CEO Neil Felton about the show, about the changes that have taken place during his decade at the helm, and about how he sees Fespa developing.

Earlier this year Web-to-print specialist Vpress partnered website developer Making Websites Better (MWB) to bring out e-commerce solution CloudToPrint, promising printers a ROI within days. Sounds miraculous - so I asked Vpress sales director Kelvin Bell to elaborate on this, and on the urgency for printers to adopt ecommerce in general. 

There’s nothing like a new tax year to concentrate the mind on all things financial. Here Compass Business Finance walks you through the most noteworthy considerations.

Peter, your role means you deal with a wide spread of people/organisations, not all of which are within the wide-format print sector, but many of which will impact it somehow.