Supersite alert. As regular readers will be aware, moves involving the word supersite tend to set my 'uh-oh-ometer' on high.
That said, this particular news comes from the world's biggest printing company. So RR Donnelley, for it is they, should be well-equipped to avoid any potential pratfalls.
It certainly sounds like a project to keep tabs on, re the oft-debated future shape of printing companies and 'beyond print' services. Along with its Q1 results yesterday RRD boss Thomas Quinlan announced plans for a new 500,000 square foot facility in its HQ city Chicago. That's roughly 46,500 square metres, and to put that into some sort of context it's 3,500sqm bigger than Polestar's big shed in Sheffield. So really quite large.
Quinlan describes it thus: "This summer in suburban Chicago, we will open the doors of what we view as the facility of the future, a large-scale operation that combines multiple products and services that we provide under a single roof. In the first phase, we are bringing together, into a 0.5 million square foot facility, two existing RR Donnelley operations: a conventional and digital commercial printing operation; and a comprehensive, on-demand printing and complete fulfilment centre... Now, under a single roof, we can provide an online system that helps to plan and execute these promotional rollouts, prepress and related creative services, large and standard-sized digital and conventional print production, complete kitting and pack-out services and variable distribution solutions."
He reckons it's going to be a game-changer when it comes to delivering integrated marketing and communications campaigns for customers, with all the convenience and efficiency that comes from having everything in a single source.
It will be mighty interesting to see how this pans out, and whether it becomes some sort of blueprint for other facilities worldwide.
