Creative firm bounces back after £300,000 flood damage

REPROGRAPHICS business Vermillion has recovered from £300,000 of flood damage and is aiming at growing its £1.2m turnover.

The business faced closure following a five-foot flood that spread through the premises following the Boxing Day floods.

Vermillion, which provides pre-press, design and data services to some of Europe’s best-known FMCG and home shopping brands, is based on Viaduct Road in Leeds, was affected by the worst floods in 70 years.

The company’s home at Burley Bridge Mills was owned by Vermillion chairman Bill Weir, according to Print Week, which helped the company bounce back.

Proofers, computers, a physical server which contained three terabytes of data, and other hardware and software were destroyed, totally 75% of its kit, leaving the firm with the prospect of having to close its doors, with a potential six-figure bill for equipment on their hands.

Leeds City Council helped with its clean up, offering at the time £2,500 for costs such as skip hire.

The company teamed up with Opal IT to replace hardware, and the company built and reconfigured a new server for Vermillion within a matter of days.

Chris Milner, who co-founded the business in 2004, said: “It’s no exaggeration to say that the floods could have ended the business that I’ve worked so hard to build up over the last 12 years. Opal did what was necessary to get our business back up and running again and now we’re looking forward to the future with confidence.

“I suppose it’s a lesson to other businesses to make sure their IT infrastructure is robust enough to withstand a natural disaster. One incident can ruin everything.”

Andrew Metcalfe, managing director of Opal, said: “Having a robust disaster recovery plan in place is vital for business continuity in the event of a fire, flood or theft. Thankfully we managed to get Chris and his team up and running again within a matter of days to keep lost downtime and revenue to a minimum.”