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Most trade finishers around today will tell you that in order to survive in the industry you need to specialise in something that a printer is not prepared to bring in-house. On visits around the UK, PrintWeek’s reporters are always being told that finishing companies doing basic fold, stitch and trim don’t last.

So when one of the country’s most specialised finishers, Best Cover UV, says that it has spent £250,000 on new equipment, it comes as something of a surprise to find out that the investment has been made in those very areas.
The Leeds-based company bought a new Muller Martini six-station Prima with a trimmer, two MBO folders and a secondhand Palamides machine.

According to managing director Darren Crake, the investment will allow Best Cover to reduce transport costs by keeping everything under one roof. And far from being a backward move, it has brought in new work.

Best Cover has just celebrated its third birthday and is forging a place for itself in the UK printing industry through innovation – it was the first company in the UK to install a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 configured as a coater.

The LYLYX-format machine was brought in to offer a trade service for UV coating, remoist gluing, fragrancing, scratch-offs, metallics and opaques. But rather than doing a 3,000-4,000 run length, Best Cover became the country’s first firm to install a dedicated coater capable of speeds of 15,000sph.

Best Cover was incorporated in May 2005, but began operating in December that year. In its first year, the company recorded a turnover of £1.2m, despite aiming to reach just £600,000. A year later, turnover had risen to £2m.

Of course it wasn’t as easy as all that. Crake explains: When I first went alone it was just me, my wife, an old schoolfriend and a van. We did whatever needed to be done in any way we could and we progressed from there.
The company got its second operator in March 2006 and a third in April 2007. From there it has grown to a staff of 17 across two sites – including Crake, his wife and his schoolfriend. Sadly, the van has recently passed away.

After the first year, Crake spent £700,000 on equipment for a second site in east London – setting the target of eventually turning over £3m-£5m across the two sites.

He says: Our contact base was building up and the southern companies seemed receptive to our ideas. We had built up a decent-sized client list, but we had to drive a wagon to and from our customers there, so we decided to look for a base in the south.

Originally we wanted to tie up with someone, but a lot of guys down there weren’t interested, they didn’t want to team up with a competitor.

Eventually he found a company that was willing to set up a partnership, Orlo. The two companies are based next to each other in Romford. Crake says: With Olro we have a win-win situation, we can market each others services, they offer what we do, but on a smaller scale so between the two of us we find we can satisfy all our customers’ needs.

Now London and Leeds are set up, Crake is planning site number three, with Bristol among the potential locations.
That the company has taken the print industry by storm is no surprise given Crake’s experience. His work before Best Cover took him through many of the big players, including Polestar, St Ives and Pindar in a career spanning more than 20 years, so he knows what it takes to survive in an industry that can be lethal to those that make mistakes.
Now he says he finds customers actively selling Best Cover as an extension of their own services.

Crake is now looking to take the next step. Finishers often complain that they are brought into the printing process far too late, a printer will agree to do something before going to the finisher and asking them to do it.

But with the uniqueness of the Best Cover product Crake has found himself being called upon much earlier.
I have been involved in pre-production meetings, he explains. We are an important part of the chain. Finishers have often been seen as the runt of the litter – when I was a printer I felt that way. But now I realise that finishing is such a key part.

So Best Cover is moving forward, while technically moving backwards at the same time. But since the company is growing at such an impressive rate, you can’t argue with its techniques. Expect Crake to turn his hand to hand-finishing in the very near future, and make money from it.

BEST COVER UV FACTFILE
Founded May 2005
Managing director Darren Crake
Locations Leeds, Romford
Turnover £2.2m
Kit Includes Heidelberg CD 102 LYLYX dedicated coater, Bobst SP102E2, hand-fed platen, Billhöffer water-based laminator, Sakurai UV silk screen line, 8 MBO folders, Heidelberg ST300 stitcher and a Polar 115ED, two B1 Wohlenbergs and a Schneider 115 guillotine