About Us

We're not print brokers and we don't send your jobs to the cheapest bidder overseas. We're a commercial printer located on a business park just outside the city of Gloucester.

Everything is manufactured here in Britain. No weasel words: it's made right here in the UK.

We put our money where our mouth is by employing skilled UK workers operating state of the art machinery. We invest in skills training and have put several people through Advanced Apprenticeships and NVQ Level 3 management training.

We've been commercial printers since 2005, operating out of the same premises continuously. Unless you live in a cave, there is very little chance that you have never held or seen something printed by Inky Little Fingers. We are always happy to send out samples of our work as we know that our products are manufactured to the highest standards. The commercial print world has been a brutal, Darwinian one for over a decade. To paraphrase E. Hamilton Lee: There are Old Printers and Bad Printers, but there are no Old, Bad Printers!

Printing

We print higher volume products on the latest generation computer controlled full colour lithographic printing presses. Small to medium quantities are printed on one of our digital presses. The majority of our products are now printed digitally and the quality of digital printing now equals or exceeds traditional litho in nearly all circumstances. We could wax on about how great the quality is (and it really is) but why not request some free samples and see for yourself?

Bindery and finishing

These days, this is where the action is and Inky has one of the most advanced small binderies in the UK with a team of highly skilled print finishers. This allows us to be highly responsive to customer requirements, for example we often fulfil "Just In Time" book orders that will be in the bookshops or directly in customer's hands within just a couple of days

A few examples include:

• Automated punching and binding for wire and coil bound books. This allows us to change over sizes, colours and formats in minutes. We can provide consistent high quality and competitive pricing for small quantities and still remain a reliable partner for our customers who require very large quantities of books.

• EVA and PUR perfect binding for softback books and hardback book blocks. Perfect binding has been revolutionised over the last few years. We're now on our third generation of machinery in less than 10 years! This allows our skilled bindery staff to economically produce very high quality books, from a single book up to thousands.
• Robotic book block trimming, for quick and precise trimming of softback books and hardback book blocks.
• Semi automated case making. Making cases for hardback books remains a skilled job, however the latest generation machinery allows us to speed up production and offer a wide variety of materials.
• Semi automated casing in. Proper hardback books require serious machinery for strength, accuracy and repeatability. We own and operate our own casing in machinery.
• Hot foiling, die cutting and embossing. We own and operate our own machinery, including both short run digital and large platen presses for larger quantities or where the highest quality is required.
• Highly automated booklet / brochure making. We use the latest in digital production equipment with inline creasing, slitting and trimming.

Inky & the environment

Like the vast majority of UK printers, we take our responsibilities to our employees and to the environment very seriously:

• solvents - using the latest technology has reduced the use of solvents down to close to zero.
• inks - we use high quality vegetable oil based inks.
• paper - all of the paper that we use comes from responsibly managed and sustainable sources.
• paper recycling - all waste paper is collected and recycled by a local contractor.
• waste disposal - all of the "non office" waste that we create is collected, processed and recycled where possible by a government approved & registered waste processing company. Sadly for them, this is now a rare occurrence as automation and new technology has reduced the amount created down to a tiny level.

We're nothing special, all responsible UK printers will have similar processes, but we thought that you might want to know the above!