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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Aberdeen and Northern Counties Printing
Industry
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Northern Counties - Fort
William
Little, if anything, has been recorded of the early history of printing
in Fort William and so the Trust is indebted to Gordon Pearson,
Managing Director of Nevisprint Limited for his recollections since
arriving in the town in 1965. Even at that time there was only a
small one-man printing company called Lochaber Printing Services,
managed by the local tourist officer, one J.U. McInnis. Universally
known as ‘JU’, he was a popular local character and was
usually to be found proudly wearing his kilt.
The business was accommodated in a bedroom where a small Adana printing
press had been installed. At some stage, there was a move to premises
in New Pier Terrace, behind a popular chip shop. It was then that
a second-hand Heidelberg platen was acquired.
JU’s son, Malcolm, having served an apprentice-ship in the
company, named LPS, took over from his father around 1962-63. He
was ambitious and in 1969 transferred to larger premises in Claggan
Road, at the same time re-named the firm LPS (Colour Printers) Ltd.
Malcolm’s next step was to introduce computerised typesetting
and for that purpose purchased a Harris 1200 typesetter.
Two years later, the firm moved again to yet larger premises in
the Claggan Industrial Estate where it became known as Computatype
Limited. Additional plant was acquired in the shape of a 4-colour
Crabtree press, another Harris typeset-ter and, most interesting
of all, one of the earliest OCR machines. The optical character
reader is thought to be one of the first to be operated in this
country.
Unfortunately, the company was soon to encoun-ter financial difficulties.
Without the sound finan-cial base necessary to support the expansion
of the business, coupled with teething and technical difficulties
with the new technology, the company was forced into liquidation
in 1974.
Not to be denied, a consortium was found by Malcolm, his sister,
brother-in-law, and Ken Merry (a Harris engineer) to buy out the
assets from the liquidator. The new company was called Computacomp
Limited. It appears that disagreement soon arose within the family,
possibly over financial control, and this resulted in Malcolm Clines
leaving the company.
When the collapse of Computatype occurred in 1974, five members
of staff, together with one out-sider, decided to set up a company
of their own. Four of the five had been offered re-employment with
Computacomp but all declined. Inevitably, this led to some bad feeling
with Computacomp but that was of short duration as Computacomp soon
withdrew from printing altogether to concentrate solely on typesetting.
Nevisprint Limited, the company set up by the ex-employees of Computatype,
began business in 1975, occupying the 1000 square feet premises
in Claggan Road which Malcolm McInnis had acquired in 1969. The
building was in need of res-toration following a fire, after which
second-hand plant was acquired and installed with the support of
family funding and the Highlands and Islands Development Board.
In the first year, the new company had a turnover of £40,000
and this generated a small profit.
Since these small beginnings, the firm has moved twice to new locations
and now occupies large premises at Caol Industrial Estate in Fort
William. The staff has increased to almost sixty employees and the
forecast turnover for 1998 was approximately £3 million.
Today the company is equipped with five Apple Mac DTP systems in
its origination department. Last year they became the first B2 house
in Scotland to install a complete CTP system in the pre-press and
currently the main printing units are two Speedmaster 74s.
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Volume 3 published 1996
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