A Print Journey

Big Furniture Group takes a trip to Buxton Press to celebrate three years of print.

September marked a milestone for Big Furniture Group magazine. It’s three years to the month that our very first printed edition was published. Over that time, our print readership has grown to an industry-leading number of 4.5k subscribers. Ever since launching in print, BFG has worked with Buxton Press – one of the country’s leading print houses. In fact, they print a staggering 50 million publications a year!

In honour of marking our three-year milestone, we decided it was time to do the tour and see just how the BFG magazine gets printed. It’s quite an amazing process! Arriving in Buxton, on edge of the Peak District National Park, and at a height of over 1,000ft, the town is the joint highest market town in England, while also known for its ‘healing’ spa waters.

A short, uphill, walk around the corner from the train station is home to the Buxton Press printing facility. It holds one of the largest XMF servers in Europe and can process up to 10,000 pages per day and runs through 18,000 sheets of paper an hour. It’s an impressive operation. Furthermore, around 20,000 aluminum plates are used a month. As an example, a 132-page BFG magazine would require 72 plates – and that’s just for the text.

All the attention to detail is conducted at the beginning of the process, making sure each job runs as efficiently as possible across the four presses that are installed. Watching the freshly printed paper sheets fly out of the press line is like you’re about to launch into hyper speed sitting in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon (sorry, a Star Wars geeky moment!) In fact, the sheets whiz through the press at a speedy 45mph.

Alongside the press machinery, with Buxton recently investing £4.9m in a new press machine that was mid-way through installation upon our visit, the facility has other machinery for folding, binding and packaging, as well as experienced staff dedicated to specific divisions of the process.

“At Buxton we have installed the latest available press technology and our fleet of Heidelberg presses have been carefully selected for their overall performance, speed, reliability, efficiency and of course, exceptional print quality,” Lindsay Frost, Head of Marketing at Buxton Press, told us.

“We’re certified to FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody Standards too. This allows clients to display an appropriate label in their publications to indicate that the paper used is certified and from a responsible source.

“We are also happy to support our clients however possible. As a leading printer, we take great pride working with many customers across a variety of industries. It’s been a pleasure to oversee the journey Big Furniture Group magazine has gone on so far, watching the editions grow, alongside its readership.”

From September 2022’s first edition of 52 pages, to an all-time high of 148 pages last month, Big Furniture Group magazine continues to set the standard. Well, we think so anyway. What’s more, Buxton are happy to support any queries relating to print, distribution and circulation via a letter of fact, further endorsing our print audience and quality.

“With all our clients, we know when they say what they print, they mean it,” Lindsay said. “The same can be said for BFG. It’s been a privilege to print an industry-leading magazine for the past three years and we look forward to many more years as a trusted partner.”

As Big Furniture Group continues to evolve and grow, you can rest assured that our print quality is of highest standard and we are bucking the trend by increasing our print circulation by the thousands, when our competitors are decreasing. We’re committed to print and reporting on the latest furnishing industry news, so share your story and watch it fly through the press – or stars if you’re a Skywalker!