British Printing Corporation
1981 Robert Maxwell bought a controlling interest in British Printing Corporation. Changed its name to the British Printing and Communications Corporation (BPCC).
Maxwell acquired Odhams, Watford’s other large gravure printing house
1983 merged Odhams with Sun Printers at the Whippendell Road site to create Odhams-Sun Printers Ltd. He brought web offset to the factory and oversaw the paring down of the workforce to try to make the company competitive with other printers in the U.K. and on the Continent.
1987 BPCC became a subsidiary of Maxwell Communications Corporation (MCC).
1989 Maxwell’s deputy and several other directors bought the BPCC Group from MCC. Most of the Sun’s Whippendell Road site was abandoned and operations were moved into the Sun’s former paper warehouse on Ascot Road. The only printing method used there was web offset; there were around 200 employees.
Odhams/Sun was renamed BPCC Sun Ltd., then BPCC Consumer Magazines (Watford) Ltd.
1998 What remained of the former Sun Printers was merged into a new printing conglomerate called Polestar Group. Polestar removed the last printing presses from the site in 2004.
See Also
Sources of Information
- History of Sun Printers [1]