This Blog

Syndication

Tags

Printer’s Devil – it’s in the detail

Seminal year ahead for BPIF

Bravo to the BPIF membership for voting to exclude pre-packs. At last some concrete and direct action to make life more difficult for those who pre-pack for convenience.

The slight wrinkle being, I can't help wondering how many of those who fall in the dodgy pre-pack bracket would bother with the niceties of BPIF membership anyway. Does the membership currently include any notorious pre-packers? I guess one could say that technically Polestar pre-packed back in 2006, although it was the group's investors who lost their shirts not its trade creditors. Are there any latter-day masters of the dark arts of pre-packing in the existing membership? Will any upcoming regional meetings involve a bit of embarrassed shuffling and a lack of eye contact with Johnny Prepack? I avidly await more details of how this is all going to pan out.

Unfortunately the sort of company directors who are willing to ride roughshod over employees and creditors on the basis that pre-packing is legal, if not ethical, are hardly likely to lose sleep over this. It's the government that really needs to take action to put a stop to such connivances.  

Elsewhere, I was faintly amazed to learn that Michael Johnson will have been in post for ten years when he steps down this time next year. I'm sure I remember him saying he was only going to stay for three.

Anyhow, I hope Michael's entirely understandable desire to go out with something of a bang, flourish and/or fanfare doesn't see the BPIF rush into some sort of merger deal with manufacturing federation the EEF. This, of course, was formerly the Engineering Employers Federation. Does the 21st century printing industry really have that much in common with engineering - 90% of EEF members are exporters "and nearly 40% export more than half of their turnover". As I understand it the EEF is a much larger organisation, so I'm envisaging a scenario whereby the BPIF would end up as some sort of special interest group within it, and I'm not sure I like the idea of that.  

 

Published Jul 09 2010, 09:26 AM by Jo Francis
Filed under:

Comments

 

Joseph Carlow said:

I think the definition of pre-pack needs understanding and defining.

For example, when Nick Dixon and his team bought the Howitt business out of administration, they completed the transaction on 4th February 2004 - just three days after it went bust. This was a classic pre-pack whereby the purchaser (Dixon) had entered into dealings with the prospective administrator BEFORE the date of administration. There's nothing wrong with this and, if anything, it minimises the time the business is in limbo when customers and staff often leave. Look at the time its taken to sell BemroseBooth, for example.

What is unacceptable is the phoenix pre-pack where previous directors and/or shareholders acquire the business and leave oldco debts behind. SIP16 is supposed to provide more accountability and transparency, especially with the professional firms involved. We'll see.

JC

July 9, 2010 2:48 PM
 

NDCT said:

In no way can Polestar be considered a pre-pack from 2006. As you say, it was the investors (shareholders) who lost out, and that's exactly how it should be, for it is they who carry the risk. Crucially, though, it is they who have the power to change the board and the direction of the company which they own.

As for the future, it is clear from many comments posted on PW that there is support for a genuine members organisation representing the printing industry in the UK.  The big problem with the BPIF, and I suspect also with EEF, is that they are now primarily commercial organisations, not representative ones.  The AA and RAC were considered to be membership organisations once, but they too were really just cash cows, milking their members for fees at the same time as selling them products. The fact that both the AA and RAC were eventually spun out into fully-fledged profit-making outfits simply confirmed it.  The BPIF is in the same mould.

Fundamentally, an organisation that purports to tell businesses how to run their business, but cannot demonstrate the ability to do so itself, has a credibility problem.

July 12, 2010 8:28 PM

About Jo Francis

Jo Francis has worked in print-related businesses for more than 25 years. Along the way she has been a typesetter, a screen printer, a technical and customer support pre-press specialist, a communications consultant, and an editor. She is a former editor-in-chief of PrintWeek magazine and is currently associate editor of Haymarket's print titles.