The incident happened on September 20th and threatened to disrupt business at the firm, which supplies a range of print services to a host of customers.
Despite the flood, managing director Scott Conway told SignLink that the firm is near enough back to full strength—thanks to the help of its committed workforce.
“Damage caused by the flood was substantial; all ground floor offices were flooded, computers, office printers and network ports were all under water, as well as the production area, which was under 18cm of water at one point,” Conway told SignLink.
“There was also rain damage to some of the ceilings, both in the upstairs and downstairs offices.
We have an amazing team here; once the call went out, lots of staff turned up and several of the guys bought their wives in, and there was a concerted effort to mop up the water and start stripping the machines down to dry them out”
“We have an amazing team here; once the call went out, lots of staff turned up and several of the guys bought their wives in, and there was a concerted effort to mop up the water and start stripping the machines down to dry them out.
“That weekend was a bit a blur for myself and Wayne Bodimeade (co-director) seeing seven years hard work bobbing up and down in dirty water, but everyone seemed to organise themselves to get the job done.”
In terms of how much the damage cost the firm, Conway said estimates are around the £50,000 mark for contents and about the same for buildings, with substantial stock damage in terms of material and hardware stock as well as water ingress into the machines.
Conway continued: “Every bit of equipment we’ve got was affected by the flood in one way or another, it all had to be stripped down, cleaned and dried.
We worked very hard indeed to keep overall disruption to our customers to a minimum—it could have been much worse”
“On Monday morning we still had no idea of whether we would get up and running that week or even that month.
“We let customers waiting for immediate jobs know there will be a delay and that we would keep them informed, but by Tuesday evening we had one of the Vuteks back up and running so we worked through the night to catch up.
“EFI were brilliant in supplying parts for the Vuteks overnight, in fact the only machine that is still inoperative is the Zünd, which is only four months old and is currently awaiting parts.”
“We worked very hard indeed to keep overall disruption to our customers to a minimum—it could have been much worse.”
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