Lucrative contract wins prompt Document Outsourcing expansion

Document Outsourcing has doubled the size of its Warrington facility to make way for new digital presses, following recent contract wins, and is planning a third site as it targets 30m turnover by 2015.

The Strathclyde-headquartered mailing business renovated its Warrington site for the start of the new year, now standing at 1,394sqm, and added two Xerox Docutech 180 highlight colour cut sheet printers.

The machines, which arrived in November, give Document Outsourcing one of the largest variable colour capacities in the UK with eight variable colour printers across its two sites, managing director Neil McCallum claimed.

A full-colour Xerox 1000 is also due to arrive in May, which McCallum said will increase capacity at Warrington by 50%. The Warrington plant was Document Outsourcing's first English site, a sister plant to the Bellshill facility just outside Glasgow, which opened in 2010.

In June this year, new inserting lines and a Shuttleworth Progress MIS will be installed at the Warrington site, bringing the total investment to over £1m over eight months.

The investments have been made to boost productivity following the company’s success in taking on nine new financial services customers and seven local government clients over the past five months. The new contracts contribute an additional £2m benefit to the company’s current £14m turnover.

McCallum said: "We are able to output in Warrington exactly the same documents that we can at our Bellshill site in Strathclyde. New wins reflect our focus on sectors which have a greater likelihood of being paper based for the foreseeable future."

He added that a recent investment in PrintNet document composition software assists customers with shifting to electronic communications such as e-mail and text messaging, but the business continues to focus on long-term paper-based industries.

Last year, Document Outsourcing also opened two new sales offices: one in Birmingham in August, and a further Newcastle-based location in December. McCallum said that the new facilities were put in place to aid the company’s vision of tackling more growth in the local authority sector.

Additionally, a third site is expected to open at the end of this year in southern England as the company targets £30m turnover by 2015, more than double its current income.

McCallum said that having a number of sites as opposed to one supersite complements the company’s strategy to have local bases, thus keeping costs and environmental damage at a minimum while enhancing their commitment to "day-definite delivery" for its Royal Mail-approved Primepost zonal mail service.

He added: "We are proud of our reputation in the marketplace and point to some recent significant client wins to demonstrate that our approach of smaller but strategically placed operational sites is the right strategy against the backdrop of an uncertain economic landscape in a competitive marketplace.

"Our plan is to develop and grow our presence nationally, which should result in a significant increase in turnover and further job opportunities.

"I have spent the last two years ensuring we have the right people, systems and equipment in place in order to allow us to continue to deliver a high quality service and build upon the solid foundations that we have laid so far."