QPS relocates to larger premises

Stoke-on-Trent-based digital and screen printer Quality Print Service has invested around £700,000 on a new facility and is set to make an investment in wide-format kit.

QPS officially moved into the new premises, in Fenton, Staffordshire, on Monday 27 June. The new site is three miles away from its old facility, in Stoke.

QPS managing director Jamie Copeland, who owns the company along with his business partner Russell Fairweather, said: “We are bringing all production under one roof. We looked at ourselves as a smaller printer in our older building, it was old-fashioned, there was no flow to the work.

“This place is a purpose-built industrial factory, it’s got the workflow, production can be efficient and we have the room for expansion and a further investment in large-format kit.”

The old facility was made up of three units, one 700sqm and two that were around 280sqm combined. The new facility is made up of one 1,900sqm unit.

Copeland, who bought QPS ten years ago, said that he and Fairweather had been looking at moving for the past two or three years. After looking at a variety of local premises and considering the purchase of land to build on, they found the Fenton premises in late 2015 and the deal went through at the beginning of March.

Copeland said price was a big factor in the purchase, along with its locality. “We also now have better staff facilities and better working environments for all the departments really. It’s no inconvenience for some people to travel a further three miles so there are no issues there,” he added.

QPS currently runs two Fujifilm Acuity machines for its wide-format work but Copeland wants to add to this within the next six to 18 months.

It currently employs 21 staff and will be hiring three to five more in the next two years. Its turnover is £1.5m and Copeland wants to push this over the £2m mark by the end of this year, aiming for £2.5m by the end of 2017.