About

The History of Blackburns

T.Blackburn (Printers) Limited was founded by Thomas Blackburn in 1927, later incorporated as a private limited company and in September 1986 became a wholly-owned subsidiary of London based Continuous Stationery plc. On 20th October 1989 the business was acquired from the Group by Zenon Moklak and David Peacock and the name changed to the present title.

The Company specialises in the design, printing and finishing of general and computer stationery, business forms, full colour marketing and promotional literature and MICR / OCR encoded work, using conventional litho and digital technology. We also offer a specialist 'Print Management' stock and distribution service for multi-branch clients.

A trade print finishing service was developed by the acquisition Spence & Co, Thompsons Print Services Limited and F Higginbottom & Sons between 1991 and 2002. This activity however, was discontinued in the following year.

In March 1995, the Company acquired and successfully merged the employees, customers and other assets of Embossograph Printers Limited into the operation at Shiffnall Street.

In October 1996 the company established its digital print speciality, to provide a short run 'on demand' full colour print service from the Indigo E-print 1000+ press. Since then three further machine upgrades have taken place, the latest being the investment in two HP 5000 four colour digital machines which were installed in January 2006.

In April 2001 there was a second management buy-out leading to the retirement of David Peacock, the reorganisation of the Board of Directors into its current form and the adoption of a new management philosophy set out in the Company Vision which is reproduced later.

Blackburn's achieved BS 5750 Part II (ISO 9002) Quality Assurance accreditation in November 1993 at the first application. In December 2003 this was successfully upgraded to the latest ISO 9001: (2000) series.

We were awarded the Investors in People accreditation in 2006 and most recently in July 2008 achieved Chain of Custody certification to both FSC and PEFC standards.

The Company currently employs 42 people and occupies a newly refurbished industrial unit following relocation from mill type premises in the centre of Bolton in summer 2006.