At the beginning of September the Chester-le-street litho and digital printer relaunched its website, with translated text and a currency converter facility, after planning a European launch since the beginning of 2012.
FCC’s customers are still 95% UK-based, but director John Knowles said that he noticed a gap in the market for shipping direct to European clients.
He said: "A lot of our work is customers buying from us at trade prices to satisfy their clients. We found that a lot of design and marketing agencies in the UK had European clients and using us to fulfil their needs.
"Instead of us sending work out the UK customer who then has to find a shipping solution, we have plugged the gap enabling customers to order direct from us for us to ship direct to clients."
He added that the non-UK trade was now split 50/50 between UK customers ordering for European clients and orders coming direct from the continent, particularly Germany and France.
Knowles said: "Our 5% revenue stream from European direct and indirect trade is incremental, we’ve never had that before. We hope to have an additional £50,000 coming in from that side of the business over the next year."
FCC took on two new administrative staff in June in preparation for the European launch to process and dispatch orders. The company hopes to reach £1m turnover this year as it grows beyond its UK-central client base.
