Building on Years of Success in Magazine Printing, Pensord Looks to Future Developments; Robert Llewellyn Jones Talks to the Managing Director of Specialist Printing Venture Pensord, Darren Coxson, Who Explains Why He Is Upbeat for the Prospects of the Company despite the Challenges Facing the Wider Sector

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Byline: Robert Llewellyn

THE WORLD owns a great debt to Johannes Gutenberg.

He did, after all, make it possible for us to read the works of Aristotle, Shakespeare and the Sermon on the Mount. Would he recognise the present-day industry that he had helped start is highly debatable. Yet those who work for magazine and periodical publisher Pensord are direct descendents of the printing press process he began more than 500 years ago.

The company, based at Pontllanfraith, was set up in 1969 by the Bill Board Company of America to produce a weekly publication called Record Week which later became Music Week and now, 40 years on, periodical magazines remain Pensord's core business. Over the last 10 years the company has been the subject of two management buy-outs.

Among its previous owners was the Aspen Group, an American investment company that bought UK companies with the intention of growing them and selling them on at a profit. When its acquisition strategy changed, Pensord was surplus to requirement and became part of a …