News

St Ives this morning confirmed that it has been appointed to handle Royal Mail's print management.

The deal, predicted by PrintWeek a month ago, signals the first big-ticket print management contract for the print group and a major success for the Group Sales initiative set up last year by managing director of UK sales Simon Ward.

In a statement to the stock market this morning, the listed firm said the contract would run for four years and would be worth around £40m per year, significantly less than the £100m per year estimated when the work was put out to tender last December.

A £40m uplift in annual sales would put annual turnover at St Ives, which announced positive annual results this week, at around £465m, a huge leap from the £382.5m it recorded in 2006.

The company added that the Royal Mail work would be produced at a number of its UK sites as well as by a number of specialist outsource suppliers.

Competitors for the deal are understood to have included most of the top names in print management, including RR Donnelley Global Document Services and Xerox Global Services, which had been seen as likely winners, as well as Communisis, HH Associates and TPF Group.

Williams Lea is understood not to have entered the tender due to a potential conflict of interest due to it being owned by German postal operation Deutsche Post.

Click here for the statement.