Just how do you go green whilst remaining profitable?

Large Format Review's man on the ground - Signtec's Peter French - mulls over the challenges facing print businesses trying to marry the demands of eco-friendliness with the need to make a profit...

“If you have read one of my articles before, you will know that I write from the ‘coal face’.  My business is right on the front line of the print industry and my hands are firmly on the crank handle of an Anapurna M.  Whilst dealing with the various demands of our valued customers and suppliers, I need to maintain a business strategy that will keep the six people directly involved in the Signtec business in work.  So, my perspective of the industry is very much from the bottom looking up. I see - and feel - the harsh reality of sustaining a business with my hands stained with printing ink and cut from the edges of countless sheets of foamex.

I have read numerous articles about sustainability but as yet, I can't really fathom what the heck they are on about.  I know what I think it means. To my mind, it means reducing unnecessary waste, reducing consumption, using materials that don't harm the environment, investing in the local area and making sure you provide employment as, where and when you can.

The sustainability of a business is primarily dictated by keeping it profitable and providing employment and tax revenues.  Without these, you don't have a business, and without business, we don't have a society that can afford to care.

But is there a flaw in the argument for sustainability? I certainly think so.  Whatever I do in terms of an eco-strategy just gets negated when the customer buys from half way around the world in an attempt to keep their own costs down.

A recent example I encountered was when I quoted for 200 sheets of printed Dibond.  Due to their own cost constraints, the customer eventually bought direct from China at £18.00 per printed sheet (yes, you did read that correctly) with the resulting output being delivered to the quayside, just down the road from us, in Felixstowe.

Now, I can invest in eco-friendly products, eco-ink, run a lean operation to reduce carbon footprint and do all the things I believe I should in order to maintain eco-credentials.  However, what use is that to the environment when businesses in China are able to dramatically undercut me on price and win the business - and burn tons of fossil fuel in the process - by delivering finished product to the UK?

I will return to this recurring theme.  You can invest your hard earned cash in eco-technologies and abide by everything that is good in an eco-friendly business, but does this make you in anyway more competitive on a price basis?  Sadly not.  And certainly not when it comes to competing on the world stage.

So what can we do?  As a responsible company, we try to minimise our footprint. Do we get any help with this?  Errr no.  As our business rates, rent and operating costs rise - particularly where we are based in the South of England - our counter price for a product has to increase in a bid to keep our business in profit.  And these resulting â€" and necessary - price rises then make us less competitive with companies based elsewhere in the UK (or abroad) where operating costs - particularly business rates and rent - are more affordable.

This geographical shift of business results in a steady flow of finished product heading down the M1 on lorries, or across the globe by whatever means deemed necessary, with all the resulting eco-negative effects that has on the environment.

But does this get counted in the eco-sums?  Is it ecologically better to buy a product locally than to incur the heavy eco-penalty that road transportation brings?

If I was the customer, my aim would still be to buy the product at the lowest price and leave the question of sustainability to the supplier.

But that’s the flaw.  It is about the customer's choice. I can be the greatest eco-champion in my business sector, but does the customer really calculate that buying from me - at a higher price - is economically more sustainable and better for the environment than buying from someone else at a lower price?

Nope.

The calculation for sustainability indicates that there is a price to pay and it can't just come off my bottom line. There has to be an incentive for local people to buy from local suppliers.  Sadly, local authorities just keep increasing our rent and rates - making us less and less competitive â€" and thereby encouraging customers to buy further afield with all the associated negative implications for the environment.

If it were only possible to remove the vicious and unfair competition imposed by large regional variations in taxation and operating costs to create a much fairer business environment, you would improve - at a stroke - the eco-environment.”

About Peter French: Peter has been working in the sign industry for 9 years having spent a lifetime in IT. Specialising in kick-starting businesses, Peter worked in many diverse business sectors.  For most of the time at Signtec he has been at the forefront of large format printing with both solvent and UV technologies.