TALL Security Print started trading in 1991, after committing to the 25 year lease of 17500 sqft of empty factory space, with ten employees, and not a single customer order.
Brian Toole (the founding chairman, now deceased) took a leap of faith, recruiting Phil Long and Bill Lamb, and needing a vowel to make ‘TALL’ invited Peter Andrew to join. Winning business solely on the basis of personal connection and the good standing of the directors, the business grew from a handful of chequebooks a day (few enough to be transported to the post office in Phil Long’s car boot each evening) to a Group of companies that now turns over £15m and employs over 140 across three secure accredited print sites.
Through the 1990s TALL Security Print steadily grew, and perhaps most significantly started trading with Checkprint, in Hinckley (then the subsidiary of a giant American cheque printer – the Deluxe Corporation). This relationship flourished until the last day of the old century, when on December 31, 1999, the TALL Group was born with the acquisition of Checkprint. Martin Ruda, now TALL Group Managing Director, joined the board, and TALL Security Print embarked on its next stages of growth.
By 2001, the original 17,500 sqft was doubled to take the company’s development, and this best kept secret in Cheshire – understandable due to the secure and sensitive nature of its activity – was nevertheless responsible for some of the most visible and popular cheques in the country – the Lottery Winners cheques, and those shown so clearly – and often ripped up – on ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ on TV.
However, nothing stays the same. Fewer ‘good old dependable’ cheques are written in the UK than ever, and the company has broadened its horizons, and over the last ten years has built up an international dimension to its business, providing cheques, ballot papers, educational certificates and a multiplicity of secure documents to organisations largely outside Europe.
A network of agents, in over 20 countries, from the Dominican Republic to Ethiopia, from Mauritius to Malawi provide a stream of new business that has seen record export sales resulting in the TALL Group being accorded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade in 2018.
Regular visits from customers in Africa, formal cheque printing accreditations from the central banks of Nigeria and Zambia, and trucks laden with secure print, off to airports to fill cargo flights to exotic destinations; all are now part of routine for the company, something the original directors never envisaged in the early days at Runcorn. Certainly not the armed guards required by the print contract to accompany the delivery of ballot papers into Iraq.
The Group acquired Northern Ireland based DLRT Ltd in 2015 to add a high-volume standard cheque book production facility, 24 people and a team with a reputation for being a quality, reliable supplier of personal cheque books to the likes of Santander, Clydesdale, Yorkshire and Bank of Ireland.
As Brexit looms, TALL is confident of maintaining its strong exports.
TALL Group Managing Director, Martin Ruda says: “When it comes to international sales, West and East Africa may not be at the top of everyone’s export list. However, for TALL, they represent exciting market opportunities for our range of security print solutions such as cheques, certificates, ballot papers and encoded documents, together with our innovative range of electronic payment systems. Whilst for many the thought of supplying products into these countries represents a real hurdle, the presence of a limited number of domestic challengers and international competitors make them ideal places for us do business.
“Today its range of products, services and solutions for financial institutions and their customers can be found across great swathes of West and East Africa, including many Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, as well as the Middle East, Asia and Caribbean.”
The recent success of the company’s overseas operation has resulted in a boost to annual turnover coming from outside of the UK with TALL Group export sales reaching £3m in 2016.
Ruda says: “That is in spite of our traditional products showing some decline. Part of our story is how we are re-engineering our business to deliver technology enabled products and services. The other part is seizing international opportunities we have identified where markets are growing.”
Ruda says: An increasingly important line for the Group is selling ballot papers overseas. “The supply of ballot papers for the Ugandan Presidential Elections in early 2016, for example, helped boost our export sales to record levels. However, we’ve also supplied ballot papers to the likes of Nigeria, Iraq, South Sudan and Liberia.
“It is thanks to our reputation for delivering in challenging circumstances, that TALL Security Print has won numerous contracts to supply ballot papers for elections in countries where trading conditions are volatile, and emerging democracies are prevalent. In some of these countries we’ve worked with the UN to provide a service, whilst in others it’s with the local electoral commission. We’ve established a reputation for working in these demanding markets, and nearly always over very short timescales.” He adds, “Winning the election contracts that we have has helped us to establish agents in over 20 countries worldwide.”
As a result, TALL regularly speaks with government departments, electoral commissions, universities, corporates and banking groups. The diverse nature of these is matched by the broad security printed products and services delivered to them. In addition to ballot papers and cheques, TALL supplies: voting lists for national and regional elections; treasury documents and certificates; drafts and dividend warrants; and a range of personalised and secure degree certificates, with student details and photograph for many prestigious universities.
Ruda adds: “We have recently gained further prestigious contracts to print degree certificates for a number of African universities. We take great pride in the design and authenticity of our graduation documents, so that universities and students can have faith in our products and know that they will be accepted with confidence in the wider world by future employers.”
Having begun printing for the Illorin University, northeast of Lagos, Nigeria, TALL Security Print’s growing reputation for quality and efficiency has secured multiple new contracts across the continent. The company now processes graduation certificates for nearly 15 Nigerian universities and polytechnics. This effective solution has also meant that the certificates are printed quickly, ensuring they are presented to the students at their convocation ceremony. Many education establishments in Africa do not issue certificates in such an efficient way, with some having a backlog of years.
TALL produces a base stock of certificates, which it holds in bonded storage at its premises in Runcorn, and the universities or polytechnics call them off to order. TALL Security Print then personalise the documents with each student’s details, and a photograph of the student if requested, followed by secure shipping of the completed certificates to the appropriate educational establishment. All this helps with security and integrity of the supply chain, as both universities or polytechnics and their students want to ensure they have genuine, uniquely personalised certificates that can be trusted and verified from a well-known source.
The Registrar of Illorin University said, “Prior to using this secure certificate service, we would have expected some 100 to 150 incidents of document fraud per year. This has now been reduced to virtually zero thanks to our contract with TALL Security Print.”
With the growing use of cheque truncation within the banking industry, TALL has supplied cheque image scanning units into the Middle East and Africa supporting this technology shift, as emerging markets improve the efficiency of their transaction processing.
Ruda added: “Having built a reputation on securely printed documentation into export markets, our TALL Group name is well respected overseas. Our new cheque scanning products and services offer a completely new portfolio of items that will appeal to new customers and markets expanding our scope and coverage within export sectors.
“We are understandably proud of what has been achieved by TALL Security Print and the other Group companies over the last 15 years in international markets outside of the Eurozone. As others prepare for the upheaval that marks the Brexit deadline, we are looking forward to developing new markets, and supporting our existing partners, in the ‘global backyard’ further afield.”
