What a difference a few days can make - there's still time for a deus ex machina. If any set of workers deserved good fortune it is the 287 ex-B&T staff. I could write plenty, but just at the moment I am probably wiser to keep my own counsel.

I have often wondered whether it would be cost-effective for a publisher to have it's own printing press?

Emma, please permit to make a few extra comments : this subject is one close to my heart.

I have every reason to believe that printing will (in the near future) return to B&T Frome (with entirely different management/ownership to Butler and Tanner Printers Ltd Company No 06331779)

The British booktrade cannot afford to lose the services of such skilled and dedicated a workforce.

When companies go into administration it is an all too complicated affair ; especially, when in this instance the administration resulted from the issuing of a High Court writ by Unite (on the worker's behalf) to seek payment of redundancy and holiday pay, as well as April's month's wages - all unpaid when the workers were made redundant (as well as previous pension contributions, deducted, but not passed to their insurance company).

The late Joe Tanner would have been horrified to witness the shabby treatment which B&T workers received from September onwards last year.

Hopefully in a few years time, the wounds of this whole sorry saga will have healed. In the meantime, I am eagerly looking forward to stocking and selling many quality illustrated books printed by the future team at B&T Frome. My best wishes and thoughts are with the new consortium.

Who needs China when such skills and expertise are available on our doorstep.

Thanks, Clive. Let's hope something comes up soon.

Chris, we place 100% of our print with JH Haynes in Sparkford, Yeovil. They are, of course, a publisher - but one who, some time ago, invested in plant to print their own books. Much of their own work is now printed at their (owned) plant in the US, which is why companies like mine are able to take advantage of this UK based, top quality, responsive, extremely competitive and all round excellent printer (they sell off their spare capacity to us). If you had the money to invest in plant; if you were convinced that paper books were going to be the strongest sector over the next 20 years and if you had a sales team to ensure capacity was around 90%, I bet it would be an excellent notion. Vertical integration, innit - controlling as much of the supply chain as possible - a very sound principle.

JH Haynes are legends in these parts ; they reprinted a title exclusively for my business, and undertake contract sheet printing for local publishers. Fine people who also publish some excellent niche market titles. It's a great shame that so few publishers, let alone authors, see the long-term advantages of having their books printed by a British business.

British printing vs overseas printing is something I was discussing at a publishing do last week.

I have lots of reservations about printing in the far east - I'm not convinced that working conditions are great (they might be relatively safe but people work long hours), emissions regulations are minimal to non-existent, human rights in China (does doing business with them condone their regime?) etc etc.

But one of my biggest issues is that by sending print overseas is underminding the British printing industry. Yes, Chinese printing is cheaper but why? At what cost to our own economy? And what are the long term benefits to the far east? It say, Brazil suddenly became cheaper, British publishers would simply change their printers and what then for futures of the far eastern printers?

The British printing industry has tremendous skill and knowledge and I feel that we have a duty to keep our printing UK-based wherever possible and if that means that our unit costs are a bit higher then perhaps the trade has to question the logic in selling books at such enormous discounts.

Vanessa, your fears about production moving from one developing country to another are well founded - it is already happening in the clothing industry.

Emma

Can you please give us details of the newsfeed on printing presses you subscribe to? Will be donning blue overalls shortly.

Thanks

Matthew

Of course: register at http://www.pressxchange.com/

I cannot fault Biddles of King's Lynn: lovely looking books, quick turnaround and surprisingly inexpensive - even for very, very short print runs.

I've lost count of e-mails from overseas firms stating how cheaper they are than the UK. Probably, but it's not for me.

Chris, within a matter of hours of the forced 287 redundancies at B&T, a senior executive from Biddles had, on the PrintWeek forums, placed a warm note of consolation to the ex-B&T workers.

As you can tell from this and other comments, I have been closely following the B&T debacle which shows just how UK's company and employment laws can be manipulated to the detriment of a business's workers and creditors - the whole episode has left a very bad taste.

While we're bigging up good British (based) printers, I'd like to add that although we've been well served by Biddles in the past - the service that we've received from Anthony Rowe has been so good (and cheap) that we nearly always go back to them these days.

M