Mercia, a print and design firm that started is a spare room of a house can look forward to celebrating its 20th birthday in a smart new home. Mercia started life 19 years producing plastic information cards for building societies.
Now, it has annual turnover of £1.4 million and employs 20 people at its new base on Duffield Road Industrial Estate in Little Eaton. Derby.
Three years after the company started, it took on its first employee, David Roberts, who later invested in the firm to become a 50% shareholder and co-director. That same year Mercia moved to the Perkins Industrial Estate on Mansfield Road, Derby. As the business expanded it moved twice to larger premises on the estate, eventually becoming the leaseholder with the largest square footage on the site.
But a combination of the business out growing the premises and ever changing technology led Amanda and David to a search for larger premises lasting almost a year. An investment of £800,000 in the former HR Plastics building in Little Eaton along with some neat redesigning of the intererior saw it being transformed to include new offices and a large printing area.
The move to the new premises was planned and executed over a two month period and included delivery and set up of a new Mitsubishi Five Colour Litho Printer as well as moving in a £120,000 digital press purchased in 2007.
Amanda Strong (Director) commented; "We wanted to combine installing and commissioning the new printing press with the move to the new premises so that we would not lose any production time, miss deadlines or cause inconvenience to our clients. The new premises provide a better quality environment for our staff and customers when they visit us to discuss their requirments".
Able to print everything from business stationery to full colour, multi-page publications with print runs often exceeding 500,000, Mercia Image are easily able to deal with up to 200 customers at any one time!
