Specialist greeting card printer, Windles is fronting a campaign that urges publishers and fellow printers to support a push to use UK-produced one-sided coated board from Workington-based Iggesund papermill in order to order to help save the planet while being price neutral.
Launching officially in January, the Windles-instigated campaign, entitled Come on Board, with a tagline ‘A board that helps save the world, by not travelling around it’, is the brainchild of Bruce Podmore, managing director of the Oxfordshire-based printer.
“There has been so much turbulence in the paper and board market over the last year or so. The fluctuations in currency has seen paper prices rise by 7%, and when you think that 40% of the cost of card is the paper, this is significant,” explains Bruce. He estimates that the UK greeting card industry uses 15,000 tonnes of one-sided coated board over the course of a year.
As Michelle Mills, business development and marketing manager of the company added, card publishers and their printers “were looking further and further afield to source their one-sided coated board, a staple of this industry, in the hope of finding economical solutions, but the quality did not necessarily match expectations and the carbon footprint was escalating.”
Bruce’s explorations to come up with a solution – on price, quality and environmental counts – was not the other side of the world, but only a few hundred miles up the road. Iggesund Papermill has not only invested heavily in a state of the art Biomass plant (generated by locally grown willow trees, which provide funds to the Borders’ hill farmers), but has also been working diligently to adapt the recipe for its Incada Silk brand to make it ideally suited for greeting cards.
“I am so impressed… it’s cleaner, whiter, crisper and stiffer,” Bruce said, referring to the 240gm Incada Silk substrate, which he says, due to its bulk is “eminently suitable for greeting cards. It provides a reliable price-neutral option as it will not be affected by currency fluctuations and has a minimal carbon footprint.”
Of the Come on Board campaign, Bruce stresses that this is not something Windles wants to ‘own’, but has instigated it as “it is not just important for the greeting card industry, but the whole country and the health of the universe that we seriously consider this solution that is so close to home.”
The board has already been adopted by some greeting card publishers, including Noel Tatt and Bruce feels certain others will follow suit in the new year.
Windles’ head honcho Bruce is keen to lead the charge for Incada.
