Europe 1997

EUROPE 1997

Business trip to find new opportunities for Globe Print

England

Direct Flight from Auckland via Hawaii and LA. Long trip but made more comfortable by business class travel.

Chester

Train straight to Chester which is our start point for plant visits in the area. Walked around town.
Really great history – old Roman walls. Old canal goes into English midlands and barges in and out all the time. Some locks to navigate at start of canal at northern end of town. Plenty of churches around town centre. Also plenty of old pubs. Went down to weir on River Chester. There was a large crowd watching historical boating on river. Seemed to be home made rafts in all directions most of which eventually got damaged or just fell apart.

Met Sean Smythe Technical Manager Rexam Print and Packaging for dinner. Nice guy – he will be my host for the next few days.

Wrexham - with Sean Smythe

Special high performance adhesives

Manchester
Direct Mail Company

Glasgow

Smith and McLaurin – high performance adhesives but SandMcL up for sale so not quite as good an opportunity as I had hoped

Bridlington (Yorkshire)

Great little coastal town up from Hull. Stayed at a small pub in the middle of town and went out for dinner with Company representatives. Plenty of pubs to choose from – 200 within 12 mile radius!!

Decision to purchase on line rewinder. Had a good plant tour and the hard sell. Gear seemed very good and they were represented in Australia. Similar to Arpeco equipment but a lot cheaper. Left thinking that we would buy a unit that could be bolted onto the Webtron (or Mark Andy). Maybe OK for bank rolls and other such things.

Bath

Large commercial printer and direct mail company



Lewes

McCorquodales made high quality mag stripe cards. Quick tour around plant but for too high tech and expensive for Globe. Great pre press area which was a real eye opener.

Stayed the night in Lewes – a really historic little town on the Suffolk downs. Hotel had been around since 1200 AD. Rooms were very small with low ceilings and small doors. Roads into town were OK but many of the streets were very narrow (called twittings). They were there to slow down pirates and Vikings if they ever attacked the town. Had a good wander around the town and went to an old famous battlefield (I think it was something to do with the early English kings). Town had a village green where some guys were playing a strange version of bowls (maybe a bit like that which Drake was playing before the Spanish Amarda)

Suffolk - Card Plant

Nice little plant in Suffolk (very small village) manufacturing paper and plastic cards for clubs, small companies etc. Mag stripe, non Mag stripe plain, laminated all sorts of combinations. Simple plant set up with straightforward machines eg small 2 colour Ryobi, die cutters, punch, quite good pre press. Best model for Globe – no doubt. Spent some time talking to manager about marketing, sales set up etc. Simple lunch at plant

Sean Smythe dropped me off at BR Hertford Station for a trip to Euston, tube to Victoria and the BR to Winchester.

Winchester

for weekend with Hilary and David. I hadn’t seen them since we left the UK nearly 30 years before. Would have recognized them both straight away esp Dave. They have a very nice 1 up 1 down house in southern Winchester. 4 Bedrooms on a small plot of land. The area was part of an old priory (which is still there as an old large house) and they are not too far from the water meadows ie an area with a stream running through it and fairly swampy marshy ground (in parts) all around. The place used to be very swampy in the middle ages but has been slowly drained.

It was really great to catch up. Early night for me. Next day went for long walk around the local area and climbed a hill overlooking Winchester. I think it was an old fort or something as it had some ruins up there. Walked along the meadows past some old hostels where some servicemen are put up. They in some way relate to the royal family as the queen gives them tithing money (or something).

Also went with H. into Winchester and had a look around the town centre. Cathedral is magnificent. Choir was practicing so got a bit of free entertainment. Later that day we drove out into the country for a pub meal. Great place with huge servings of things like Roast and Yorkshire pud and monumental tankards of beer. Lovely evening.

Next day mainly concerned with getting myself on a plane to Lux as there was a strike at Heathrow. Finally succeeded and booked an early morning flight out of Southampton airport to Brussels and then to Lux.




Luxembourg

flew into Lux from Brussels after overnighting in Hilton Airport hotel. Plane flight was with Sabena and only took 45 min. Stayed in Golf Hotel close to Lux Airport and was picked up next morning by Du Pont rep.

Visited Du Pont European HQ outside Luxembourg. Got a whirlwind tour of the plant and the section that manufactured Tyvek. Interesting process – highly automated. German lady took me to a lecture theatre and gave me the history of Tyvek and showed me a lot of local samples.

Had lunch in Lux city – can’t remember where but a nice place in the middle of town.

Bremen

Was then taken to Trier to catch train to Bremen. Nice fast drive in sports model Mercedes. Had to wait for a couple of hours for train to Dusseldorf via Koblenz. Great ride through Moselle valley. Then changed for Bremen. Another long ride and arrived late at night. Stayed at a fairly average hotel near station.

Got train to Bremerhaven next day to visit BWK (big wool processing plant out at port). Met three technicians who showed me around. Saw some woolpacks with Paktrak labels on them!! Huge plant but I didn’t see much of the production area. Saw one of their scouring lines and warehouses and that was about it.

Met German guy who was working on bale labelling project in conjunction with AWC. Went out to dinner with him in old part of Bremen. Great evening – had a traditional style German dinner with lots of beer. Hard to wake up next day. Went to Bremen airport and got a flight back to Heathrow via Amsterdam.

Heathrow long direct flight to HK .

Hong Kong

Met in HK by Mike Fu Rexam China and taken to Hotel on island.
To Rexam offices next day and briefed Mike and colleagues on Globe and printing opportunity with Liptons GuangZhou.

Guang Zhou (Canton)

Travelled with Mike to Guangzhou by train. Good fast trip.
Taxi to Liptons after lunch. GZ a terrible place with building work going on all over. Liptons management were interested in Globe proposal – it’s up to us to produce a good quality product.
Got a local bus back to HK. Very interesting trip as it was chocker with people from the country trying to get into Szenchen to work. Internal passport controls and borders made that impossible.
Bus finished in northern Kowloon so I got another bus then ferry back to Hotel.