Almost 80% of bids won Olympic work, BPIF survey shows

Following the news earlier this year that the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) had awarded the £16m Olympic ticket printing contract to a US firm and more recent news of souvenirs and merchandise being produced in China, the BPIF has carried out a survey amongst its members to determine how many had bid for and won Olympic-related print work.

Out of 504 replies received within 24 hours of sending the survey out, 395 said they did not bid for work while 109 did. And of the 109 who did, 86 won their bids. The survey did not ask respondents to specify whether they were undertaking work as a main contractor or as sub-contractors.

Additionally at the BPIF annual general meeting this week, a show of hands revealed around 50% of attendees had successfully bid for work.

BPIF chief executive Kathy Woodward said: "I was tremendously disappointed that they didn’t engineer for the tickets to be printed in the UK. They had such a long lead time on it that of there had really been a will they could have done it here.

"But I am heartened that so many printers that appear to have bid for work have been successful and looking at the tremendous quality of work that is out there it is a great advert for the British printing industry."