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After its inception in the aftermath of the Buncefield fire, FFEI has blazed a trail to success

At 6.10am on 11 December 2005, Hertfordshire was awoken by the largest peacetime explosion in European history. A faulty fuel gauge at the Buncefield oil depot allowed nearly five swimming pools’ worth of petrol to flow into tank 912, resulting in an overflow which created a highly flammable gaseous cloud. By the time the cloud ignited, possibly by a spark in an electrical generator building close to the site, it was up to 7m deep in places and covered around eight hectares of land. The resulting explosion, which measured 2.4 on the Richter scale, was heard on the continent.

The building closest to tank 912, which was so badly damaged by the blast it was later demolished, was the headquarters of Fujifilm Electronic Imaging. It is hard to imagine a bigger disaster that could occur to a company, although fortunately the timing of the explosion – a Sunday morning – meant that no staff were on-site. From the ashes of the Buncefield fire rose FFEI – an independent UK company wholly owned by its management team, who successfully launched an MBO bid less than 12 months after the disaster.

FFEI, which has retained strong ties with its former parent company in the form of both joint intellectual property rights and contractual agreements, has since grown at a remarkable rate. Just like the rapid shoots of recovery seen in nature following a devastating forest fire, FFEI has shot up and branched out into a broad range of disciplines including, most recently, human tissue scanning. Quite a departure from being simply the manufacturing division for Fujifilm’s platesetters. In 2005 we were already asking ourselves, ‘what about the future?’, explains managing director Andy Cook. We saw CTP sales peaking in 2006 and while that wasn’t a problem for Fujifilm [because it would continue to benefit from plate sales] it meant that our business was not sustainable.

Divisional structure
The company is now organised into five business divisions: commercial and newspaper CTP, technical support, life science scanning, workflow and industrial inkjet. Each division has its own profit and loss account and all of the company’s employees are eligible for a monthly preformance-related bonus worth up to 9% of their monthly salary.

At the time of the Buncefield fire, Cook and his colleagues were already branching out into new technologies, but it is since the MBO that this development has really taken off. In the last two years, FFEI has launched the Caslon digital inkjet flexo press – a joint venture with Nilpeter – the Alinte News platesetter range, the Emblaze digital UV spot coater and its RealVue 3D proofing software. In addition, the company’s Life Science division is gearing up for the launch of its human cell scanner – another joint venture with an as-yet-unnamed partner.

The MBO gave us the ability to invest in a whole raft of products, says Cook, under whose leadership FFEI has upped its R&D spend to around 25% of revenue. We needed to do that to create an independent organisation with longevity. We’re just coming out of that investment cycle now – we have an extremely healthy balance sheet and we are profitable on a monthly basis. Also, because of the diversity of the business, we’re reasonably confident that [despite the recession] we will have a good year. Thanks to the management team’s strategy to diversify and the investment with which that has been backed, FFEI, which is targeting modest 10% year-on-year growth, has evolved from, in effect, an assembly plant for violet CTP, to a high-tech designer and manufacturer. As a result of this switch, it has repatriated its overseas manufacturing, a proportion of which was carried out in China for the east Asian market.

Continued growth
Despite their gloomy predictions for CTP sales in 2005, FFEI has seen its platesetter division continue to grow, thanks to its new products and some astute OEM deals with the likes of China-based Founder Electronics. Founder is the number one graphic arts distributor in China and we are their exclusive manufacturing partner for CTP systems, says Cook. We also struck a deal just after Drupa with TechNova, which is the largest local plate manufacturer in India, and that led to us taking around £400,000 worth of orders at PrintPak. As a result, FFEI’s CTP business, which it saw as most at risk of decline, is actually still growing.

Meanwhile, its workflow technology is going from strength to strength and the company is currently in the midst of a development programme for next year’s Ipex, while its inkjet portfolio also continues to grow rapidly.

Last but certainly not least is the Life Science division, which was ironically born out of the ashes of FFEI’s predeccessor Crosfield, whose expertise in scanning technology was thought to have been made redundant by the advent of digital pre-press. That same know-how has led to the development of FFEI’s cellular scanning technology, which Cook says will inevitably be adopted on a large scale. All in all it looks like a bright future for one of the UK’s new breed of high-tech manufacturers.

FFEI FACTFILE
Founded 2006
Based Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire
Managing director Andy Cook
Core divisions Commercial and newspaper CTP, technical support, life science scanning, workflow and industrial inkjet
OEMs include Founder Electronics and TechNova