Enjoy the silly summer and get serious in September

Summer’s here, the sun is out and the silly season is upon us – which means that interesting industry news is harder to find than a daily newspaper without a photo of Tom Daley in his budgie-smugglers spread across the front page was last Tuesday.

Fortunately though, the sector doesn’t seem to have got the memo and has forgotten that tradition dictates that we should start slipping into a summer slowdown the second the schools shut down.

However, as the pages overleaf show those of you reading this on your first day back from holidays, you’ve missed a busy few weeks in print.

Sadly, according the BPIF’s latest quarterly Printing Outlook, it’s unlikely that you would have missed a busy few weeks on the production floor.

While it might make for a gloomy read, it’s worth remembering that it was undertaken shortly after the EU Referendum, when uncertainty was the watchword for every business leader as the shockwaves dissipated. And, let’s be honest, we’re not exactly known for being an industry run by eternal optimists, so I think it’s safe to assume that under the shadow of Brexit, the respondents at the time of the survey were more likely to describe themselves as stoic pragmatists rather than utopian dreamers. Which is fair enough really.

So let’s enjoy the summer sun while it lasts and look to start again in September with a spring in our step, a smile on our face and a more positive outlook on what should be the start of the busiest time of the year.