Calne print company Bex Design & Print reduces environmental impact with four-day week

By Peter Davison

14 June 2023

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Calne-based industrial graphic and print specialist Bex Design & Print has announced a four-day working week as part of its commitment to sustainability.

Every Friday the company’s print factory in Calne will be completely shut down to save electricity, reduce employee car journeys and improve productivity. Only the office remains open for customer enquiries on Friday mornings.

The decision comes as a natural progression of Bex Design & Print’s existing sustainable practices, including the use of solar panels, low-energy LED lights, heat reclamation and eco-friendly ink disposal.

MD Mel Conway said: “The primary motivation of this new approach is our dedication to minimising our environmental impact.

"By ceasing operations for an entire day, we significantly reduce our energy consumption as all machinery remains inactive. It also decreases the number of car journeys made by our employees.

“The shut down and four-day week offers a perk for our team members too. Giving our factory team a three-day weekend, every week, means they can enjoy a better work-life balance and come back to work every Monday feeling refreshed.

“Customers can rest assured that lead times are not affected by the change - we have been trialling the new approach since January with success before formally implementing the four-day week.”

Bex Design & Print supplies industrial graphics and printed components including printed electronics, overlays and labels for the electronics, traffic management, medical, fire and renewable energy sectors.

On top of the Friday shut down, the Bex Design & Print factory also incorporates numerous sustainable initiatives.

In 2014, the company installed solar panels on the roof and, ever since, the panels have supplied 20 per cent of the company’s yearly energy requirements on average.

Additionally, the factory and office facility is fitted with auto-dimming low-energy LED lights throughout, and has a system where heating is ducted from a CNC machine, utilising waste heat and meaning no additional heating is used.

The company also uses eco-friendly ink disposal and has an on-site chemical reclamation system, ensuring that production processes are environmentally friendly.

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.