Company Report: ProCo
ProCo Having moved all of its facilities to one site, print company ProCo is looking to strengthen supplier relationships and is now concentrating on building its brand

In 1993, The Production Company was established. The Sheffield based business initially set out as a high-quality litho outfit, which supplied to local agencies. Jon Bailey, ProCo's Sales and Marketing Director, explains that it soon earned a reputation for "doing the jobs that no one else wanted to; when there was a complex project, people would call The Production Company. It got a reputation for being a 'can-do' company."

The business developed, expanding across three sites, with three specialist capabilities; The Production Company, Pro-Imaging and Production Direct, the mailing arm of the company. Then, approximately three years ago, the Sheffield Council Northern ring road scheme commenced, with the new road surrounding one of the facilities. This spurred the business to assess its situation and decide whether it should change sites; it decided to move all three divisions to one 50,000 sq ft site, involving a £3 million investment.

Jon Bailey says: "We'd been experiencing difficulties in the mentality of the three different sites and the different service levels; customers had multiple contact points with varying levels of service and speeds of reaction. As such, we took the opportunity to become an integrated provider of marketing tools."

He continues by explaining some of the other advantages of moving: "We've always worked to ISO 9001 standards; it's always been our focus. When we moved to the new buildings one of the things we did was keep workflow in mind. We wanted to streamline our manufacturing processes and maintain competitiveness." It has helped the company to minimise wastage, in terms of time and materials. ProCo have also implemented lean techniques and everything is broken down and recycled, so that waste management is controlled.

Chain of Custody
The move to the new facilities also helped with another of the company's objectives: gaining the ISO 14001 certificate. Jon Bailey explains that ProCo hopes to achieve the certificate in 2008. "Every buying decision within our business

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