FuturePrint Podcast
FuturePrint is dedicated to and passionate about the power of print technology to enable new opportunities and create new value. This pod features deep-dive discussions with the people behind the tech as well as market analysis, trends, marketing and storytelling!
FuturePrint Podcast
#277 - How Sustainability is Writing the Next Chapter in Book Printing
In this episode of the FuturePrint Podcast, Marcus Timson speaks with Lisa Faratro, Director of Environment and Sustainability at CPI Group, Europe’s largest book manufacturer. With over 400 million books produced annually across 14 sites in the UK and continental Europe, CPI sits at the heart of an industry often assumed to be in decline—yet books are proving more resilient and more sustainable than many imagine.
Lisa shares her journey from production management to leading sustainability strategy across CPI’s European operations. She explains how the role evolved from an add-on responsibility into a standalone leadership position, reflecting the company’s commitment to making environmental performance as central as financial performance.
The conversation explores how CPI has pioneered print-on-demand and digital workflows to slash overproduction, cut warehousing, and reduce waste—turning sustainability into an operational advantage. Lisa also discusses the complexities of materials such as paper and plastics, why trade-offs must be judged in context, and how collaboration with competitors, publishers, and industry peers is vital for real progress.
Far from being eclipsed by screens, books are enjoying a resurgence. From tactile, beautifully produced editions to efficient “book of one” models, Lisa highlights how innovation is reshaping not just production but also the cultural relevance of print. She emphasises the need to keep sustainability front-of-mind, integrated into everyday decision-making and long-term investment strategies.
As a founding partner of A Manifesto for More Sustainable Print, CPI is helping lead an industry-wide effort to define sensible baselines, encourage collaboration, and inspire change across print sectors.
This episode offers valuable lessons for anyone in print and beyond: how sustainability, when embedded deeply into strategy and operations, can drive efficiency, resilience, and cultural impact.
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FuturePrint TECH: Industrial Print: 21-22 January '26, Munich, Germany
Welcome to the latest episode of the Futureprint podcast. I'm really happy to have with me somebody representing a sector that we haven't even covered before within Futureprint, so I'm really excited to discover more about it. Welcome to the Futureprint podcast, lisa Ferratra.
Speaker 1:Hi, hi, marcus, nice to be here and thank you for inviting me be here and thank you for inviting me and lisa, you lead the sustainability and environment strategy for cpi group. We've connected because you've become a partner for a manifesto for more sustainable print project, which is fantastic um. But before we delve into more of that um on a personal and perhaps professional level, it would be interesting um for listeners and and for me too, just to get a little bit of a an understanding perhaps of um you know how you got involved in book printing and publishing and what led you really to become the director of environment and sustainability at cpi okay.
Speaker 2:So, um, my background's always been in print and I think, like most people, I sort of fell into printing. I started working for a large insurance company that had an implant and then from there I moved into magazines at St Ives. So I worked in the web division at St Ives. So very much in the production areas areas, very much around either the commercials or production management. And then an opportunity came up at CPI as their production manager for the group and I moved here 15 years ago and I've done a variety of roles at CPI and I think that's always great about most of us that have worked in print.
Speaker 2:We've worked in various sectors within our own organizations and CPI definitely allows for that and we saw just prior to the pandemic that, obviously, environment we've always been a sustainable business from ISO 14001 and early adopter of that, but that was embedded within our organisation and we saw compliance as starting to have a larger role within the business and environment certainly was starting to make more requirements and requests of the organisation around data and what we could provide and what we needed to be doing.
Speaker 2:So for a while I did it alongside a role that I had at the time as customer service director and it became quite clear after the pandemic that actually it wasn't going to work as a role With another role. It needed to have focus, we needed to have direction. So I put forward a proposal to be able to be that as a full-time role, and that was adopted, which is great. It shows that actually it has the gravitas of being an individual role rather than being rolled into something else to show how important it is to the group. And then just two years ago it was then actually rolled into the European part so that I lead in Europe as well, to try and point us all in the same direction and give us similar targets and allow the group to use resource in a good way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so quite a journey there. And, like you say more latterly, the strategic commitment from the business to really sort of lead with sustainability is and we'll delve into a bit later. Obviously, I've checked out CPI Group and the website and everything else. It's a significant-sized business, isn't it? But for those who might not know, could you give us a quick overview of CPI Group and the kind of work the business does?
Speaker 2:Yep, so we are a book printer predominantly, and when we say a book printer, that's really anything that's perfect bound or that's a paperback or a hardback that's perfect bound or that's a paperback or a hardback. We produce around over 200 million 250 million books a year and we produce those predominantly in mono. So it's mainly sitting in the what we call the trade market. So that's what you see in your supermarket, in your bookseller. And then we also work in a sector called STMA, which is more the scientific, technical, medical and academic market, which is more around larger format books in mono, but also in colour. We're at the forefront of digital within that market.
Speaker 2:So we have a number of work streams that exist within the business and we operate in the UK across six sites in the UK, and then there's another eight sites within our European businesses. So we're in France, spain, germany and Czech Republic, and those businesses the group has been created out of acquisition, so each, each business has existed for a long, long time. Our oldest business is from 1870, which is, yeah, and our German businesses also have a long, long period of time, so that a lot of the businesses have grown out of areas where print was a huge employer for that region and the businesses have kept those names, which is really nice because it keeps the history of the company and we celebrate that quite a lot within the group to make sure that we keep the names of those companies alive really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what's you know? Sort of think about book printing generally and a sort of fascinating journey. It's very sort of indelibly linked, isn't it, with the invention of the printing press, really, because it was where it started. It's amazing really. I know, a few years ago, obviously, obviously, when smart screens start to come out and ipads and everything else and e-readers and and so on, it was like, oh, this is the, the death knell of the book. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? It it's not. That's not happened.
Speaker 2:It was a sort of temporary kind of no, and I think we all thought that, yeah, we were going to be the DVD of tomorrow, and actually it's just not people. There's lots of reports on it, but people absorb print in a different way to what you do. When you see something on screen, and particularly if you're a reader, you tend to be a big consumer of print. And it's all about getting young readers and there's a big focus currently within the book industry public publishing, um to there's a drop in readers, um of a young age and it's how do we encourage that? How do we ensure that all school children have books access at home? Um, and there's lots of work that's going on the industry and it's across the world.
Speaker 2:It's not a uk issue, it's a, it's predominantly a world issue. Um, particularly in a lot of the developed nations. It's the screen time is taking much more precedent, um, and it's how do we encourage and make sure that we have the readers of tomorrow? Um, so, but yeah, we definitely find that um, books, and particularly from the pandemic, did particularly well. Well, out of that, because there was only so much time, we were all going to watch television and Netflix, and so books definitely had a resurgence and recently there's now very much the call for the beautiful books, so we have more around the embellishments of books that we can do, so people use them as more of a collectible, which is great yeah, yeah, and that's clever use of of kind of innovative technology but, like you say, to add value and experience for the reader, and I think it's interesting listening to you talking there around smart screens in the younger audience.
Speaker 1:But I've recently read that you know books. We all know about the tactile experience and the focus on a single thing, which is very difficult to do on a screen, isn't it? But there's lots of research that points to book reading being a fantastic way to reduce anxiety as well. Yes, it's almost like the opposite of a screen that, because screens tend to do the opposite, don't they? They sort of stimulate. So so anyway, yeah, interesting and exciting mission. You mentioned, as you were explaining about CPI Group, about the history and the breadth and the size and the scale of the business, but I believe, from what I understand, is that CPI have always been a very early adopter of innovative technology, been a very early adopter of you know, innovative technology, um. Could you give us a little bit about you know how that works and what kind of um technology you use within the business to do the printing? Because I'm sure you do a lot of analog printing, but maybe you do some digital stuff too yeah, yeah, so we have.
Speaker 2:Traditionally, the businesses have come out of analogue printing and that is still where most of our volume comes from. On quite uh, particular presses that are particularly built for book book printing um, and actually most of the presses that are built um were built in the uk, which is great um, and we partnered also with um, that particular manufacturer of those machines, to help um maintain that type of business um in the uk um and digitally um when we moved, when we moved away from um to shorter run products. So the requirement, particularly um within the uk um, is driven by the fact that books actually are sold um and not um. There was a. There was a previous netbook agreement where book pricing books weren't discounted. The netbook agreement was thrown away um, I think around 15 years ago um, and then book publishers very much had to focus on okay, how do we reduce the cost of our books? Um, they were overstocking so obviously that meant we want to go to short to run um. Obviously we print most of our books actually um through a web process. So there's a quite large setup cost to that. So it's okay, how do we reduce that cost? And that's where the digital market has taken off. So this is all around producing what we call a backlist book. So this is about your books that are sitting. You want to maintain them in print, because if you, if they're not in print, you no longer retain the rights. So it's all about keeping the rights as a publisher.
Speaker 2:So what we did we adopted very early on, partnering with HP and Canon, in the main around digital processes and doing what's called print-on-demand. Print-on-demand is very much set up for the Book of One and then there's an expansion of that to short-run printing. So we adopted we very much had sheet fair presses to begin with and then we moved to digital web presses and that allows us to produce books for what's called auto stock replenishment. So you have no touch printing, so nobody places an order, it's just automatic feeds from warehouses through to um, to the print and then into back into distribution um, and then you also have what's called um, so print on demand, where we are printing in the actual um, the warehouse space itself. So we have um.
Speaker 2:We have a plant um both in the uk and one in germany that actually sits in a distributor.
Speaker 2:So they get the order, we receive the order, we turn it around overnight and we send it to them and we're in the same facility and that allows people to no longer have to stock some books. It doesn't work for all books, it's not going to mean everything is printed in that way because of economies of scale, but it definitely works for having if you've got the right type of book and the right retail price and that the demand for that book means you don't need to stock it, and that's changed the way that printing's done. We also have a network that allows us to print that same product actually with our partners in the US, with our partners that are in South Africa, in Asia, so it allows people to print all at the same time in various locations. And that's just the world of digital printing today, which is obviously adopted amongst many different types of technologies and industries, but book printing particularly has adopted that um as a as a way to reduce warehousing um costs and cash held in in in warehouses yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it's sort of, unless you really think and talk to someone like yourself. I think, actually, the the significant revolution and change in the way of producing, printing, isn't it for books? And I guess as well that you know what seems like a day-to-day not a big deal, but the rise of Amazon, and that started with books, isn't it? Yeah, so it makes a huge amount of sense. You've touched on sustainability, but tell us a bit about how important that is for CPI and also generally for the industry that you're in.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's particularly important, I think, starting with the industry, because book publishers are educators in the main, that's, most people that are in book publishing are there too, because it's something, it's a product you love and therefore what you do with that is you need to try it. It starts with education and therefore what you have is you have um, and it's quite an unusual market because we have a customer who's our publisher, but there's also the customer who's the consumer of the product, and then you also have the customer who's the author of the product. So you have this, this different influences on what is important, um, and we have authors, organizations where um sustainability is so important to those authors, and rightly so. So we did the greta thunberg book and so obviously, when you do a book like that, you can't just print that book and send it into warehouses and off you go.
Speaker 2:You need to have a lot of, you need to have something that sits behind your accreditations, and for us, that was all about how do we, how do we move from tick boxing some requirements with just certification to moving towards something that's more collaborative with both other industry players but also with our publishers, so that we can all move together at the same time, rather than just being seen to lead the way. So I think that's where sustainability is, particularly with CPI and particularly with myself. We definitely see, as we need to collaborate with industry, we need to collaborate with our peers, we need to collaborate with our competitors, because it's something we all need to do together. One can't do it on their own. There, it's not. It's nice to have a bit of a leading edge, but actually you need everybody and that's where you know working with yourselves. It's like how do we make sure that we're sharing information? Um, because that is the only way that any of this is going to change yeah, and is that difficult for some businesses?
Speaker 1:the whole collaborative thing? Do you think? Um? Obviously you're very collaborative individually, but the business is too and you're comfortable and confident about that. But do you find, do some people find it hard the collaborative thing and just can't really shake themselves out of feeling competitive, or um, I think it's, I think, I think it depends.
Speaker 2:I think once you've known to be like that, then I think that gives you an edge anyway. So, even if you're seem to be sharing the information, um, it's about whether or not you may be sharing it with a group of publishers, but you're also sharing it always with a wider market. So, yeah, I think to begin with it can be, because we do have forums that we sit on, where we've got both competitors and customers together, and it tends to be very much in the sustainability market. So we sit within that, and that is unusual because you don't do that anywhere else. Obviously, the chaps and house rules exist, but those things allow you to make sure that both you're heard from a manufacturer point of view with a publisher, but you're also heard in a wider range of, okay, what is important to individuals and companies?
Speaker 1:um, and then how you can help with that yeah, and it's a willingness and to to think bigger picture, isn't it? And move beyond our little silos and competitive tensions and pressures and so on. So it's a, it's an attitude, a mindset. I suppose I'm really interested to learn a bit more about your role. I mean, at the intro you sort of talked your journey to where you are today, um, which is interesting and it's a really positive leading leadership position. What, what does your role involve day to day? And and um, give us a feel for what ways you've been able to improve, perhaps, cpi, sustainability, performance, uh, perhaps in more recent years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I want to talk about what I do today, because I only talk about one subject at the moment. I'm not going to try not to mention that on this podcast, but usually, day to day, my role is more around okay, what measures do we have in place? What targets do we have in place? What targets do we have in place? And we signed up recently to sbti, so we're just um going through that at the moment, um to understand the targets as a business that we put in um. But it's also we're trying to make it not just around carbon, because carbon is one of the measures that we use as an industry.
Speaker 2:Um legislation's running quite fast at the moment. So I would say legislation is probably where most of my time is spent, about the impact that's going to have on us as a business. And then also I work very closely with our technical director just around what our investment strategies look like to make sure that, as businesses, we're doing and investing in the right thing for us, both from a sustainable financial position but also from a sustainability point of view. So it's trying to pull at those strands. Really, that's probably my day-to-day and spending a lot of time with our sales teams and publishers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. It makes me think actually the motivation and drivers that obviously you mentioned legislation there. I know consumers are expecting or assuming things are more sustainably produced, but that's just what I think. What do you see as the main forces driving sustainability for printing or specifically book printing, as I said, legislation, consumer demand or just sort of a commitment to do the right thing? What do you see as the main forces?
Speaker 2:So I think within our industry it definitely um, our publishers are driving because they're publicly stating what they're doing. We also publicly state. So I think once you're willing to put something on your own website to say this is what you're doing, this is what you're committing to, that sort of drives you to to to do that, to do better. Um, targets our operations teams are very target driven, so that always helps by rolling in our targets for sustainability along with our financial targets. So it's how we align those together. That's probably the thing that will be going forward, I think, as legislation catches up and pulls targets together. So recently in the UK we do what's called ESOS reporting, so it's about energy saving. But now you have to report on out of your report what are you actually putting in place as a business, and that's available on a government website. So it's that you're no longer just getting a report done and putting it in a drawer. You're getting a report done and then you're saying what your actions are and then you're reporting on did you achieve your actions? And if you didn't, why not? And you can see that there's just more teeth to some of this stuff than there used to be. And I think what we definitely find is that our publishers, particularly, are driving towards the openness that we definitely embrace and the openness of being able to report on a lot of the information that they require, which is setting some targets, showing some reductions, but also just showing what you've done well, what you've not done well. It's a really interesting space that we all sit in, because sometimes you're doing something. A year down the line you'll be looking something ago.
Speaker 2:That was the wrong thing for us to do, because often it's a balance in sustainability. There isn't one path for all. Um. It's what's right for you and your brand and what you're trying to do. Um and plastic's the perfect um. You know that's the most difficult thing for us. We use plastic within our um, within part of our process, and it's that. Just remove plastic and it's like it's the, it's like it's the right thing for us, it's the right thing for the kit, it's also the right thing when it's recycled correctly and it's that. How do we collaborate on these types of things? So I think they're where we find our publishers pushing us to ensure that we align together with um what we're saying publicly, so that we can all we can all point together. Again, it's back to collaboration yeah, collaboration.
Speaker 1:I guess it justifies, doesn't? It places a reason behind, like you say, plastic, which is very much a demonized product? I suppose a lot now. But, like you say, a part of sustainability is commercial viability as well. Right, absolutely. And so, while you can't condone harmful stuff and say you're sustainable, at times we're going to have to use the best product for the job. Right, whether it's a cost implication or whether it's a particular function that can't be done anywhere else. But I guess you go through the process of rigorously assessing how to create something and what to use and what not to use, and and then you put all that information in a kind of easily readable kind of format. So people, okay, yeah, using plastic. This is why is that? Yeah?
Speaker 2:I think, and it does depend on where industry is, because it had plastic has absolutely been demonized and paper and obviously we're a massive consumer of paper, um, but you will have then recycled paper will say something else and it's trying to get into. It's really about trying to hold true on what you believe. What are the why is it you use it? Is it the right thing? Is it the right thing for you to use at that moment in time? Um, it's a bit like the way we assess should we print something digitally or should we print something lithographically. You know it isn't just as simple as well. This one's a little bit cheaper, but actually then you have to take into account well, what about the waste of that? Or hold on a minute, will you overproduce on that? And it's that. How do you eat?
Speaker 1:it's pulling all those things together, both from a commercial point of view, but also from a material consumption and and waste point of view yeah, it's really important and it gives you a really granular I'm sure a really granular understanding of each project and the overall business by going through that process. Um, so, yeah, really interesting stuff can see how big your job is now from the way you're talking about. It's quite significant, isn't it? Um, just a bit about the industry, really, from from your perspective. Is the book industry generally seen as environmentally positive or does it still carry a bit of a reputation for being a little bit harmful to the environment?
Speaker 2:oh, that's a tough one, um. I think books are seen because they're a storer of carbon. All the time that we have them on shelves they're seen as a good thing. Paper industry, potentially, is demonized slightly around deforestation, um, but you know that paper industry does a lot around trying to um educate people in the. We don't cut down trees to make paper. We cut down trees to make timber, and paper is a byproduct of the timber industry, and it's trying to have it that people don't pick up with a strand of information and then run with that, which we tend to very much see when people are asking questions. When you know Google um is great, but often it can give you the answer that that is maybe not quite correct for what you're looking for, um, without all of the information um to hand. So what we definitely, I think within book publishing itself is seen as something that is environmentally friendly and what they're definitely doing is working on making sure that when they use something so obviously we use a lot of cover finishing but when they use it it's got an impact and it's got reason to have that.
Speaker 2:So a lot more of the publishers, you know, look at their product from a sustainable point of view and whether or not does it need everything it's got? They have recently introduced a new typeface that reduces pagination, and all of those things help, and it's about promoting those things and making sure that people know what to do when they have a book. What do I do at the end of the life of my book? Do I keep it on my shelf? Great, that's fine, that's lovely. But when I don't want to keep it on my shelf anymore, what do I do with it? And it's that and that's what the book industry is working on now. It's about how do you promote the life cycle after the use of a book. So, whether it be a resale market or whether it be into recycling, it's just making sure that people understand what they can and can't do with the book at the end of it yeah, really interesting.
Speaker 1:Um, and a book, like you say. I mean, I have a bookshelf. I like looking at the all the books, so it makes me feel like I'm intelligent. But, um, I haven't read all of them. I'm not. I'm not very good at finishing books, but I'm quite good at at dipping in and out, but there's something pleasing about a bookshelf, isn't there? Yeah, it's just. I don't know why it just is. Thinking a bit more broadly, what changes do you think perhaps the wider print industry needs to make in order to improve sustainability performance?
Speaker 2:So I think it's just about. I think most, most people actually don't know we really exist as an industry. So I think our federations do a great job within themselves, but it's the general public um don't understand um that we exist as an industry, and I think it's about making sure that um that when we promote that, we can promote to both the industry as being sustainable from a. Is it something I want to be employed in, because is it going to exist in five years time? Um to something actually that can be quite exciting place to be um and also seeing that actually we do take these things really seriously um and that most all printers that I've ever worked for and some really big brand printers, some really small ones um, it's the you know we. We already exist under a lot of legislation. We already make sure you know everything is um responsibly um taken away waste, contractors, etc. Um, and it's just making sure we promote more of that.
Speaker 2:I think, as an industry in the um, we're seen very much, as you know, whatever you see on the news when they're, you know, showing a newspaper being printed, which isn't different to what we do, it's exactly the same.
Speaker 2:There's so much that exists around that as a business, as an industry, and so many industries exist on the back of print. Um, because of that, and I just don't think that, and particularly in the uk you know, we have a huge um print industry and we just don't promote that as a manufacturing industry. Very well, um, and from a sustainability point of view, I think to make sure that we're not seen as we are the dvd of tomorrow, know that we are seen as actually we do some really exciting stuff and within the industry we print on some amazing. You know, I think most people don't even realize, you know, when you see a building being wrapped that it's been printed, you just see it, don't you? You just don't really take much notice of it. You just see it, don't you? You just don't really take much notice of it. And I don't think we promote a lot of the things we do from a sustainable point of view that actually all of those things are being considered when those actions are taking place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and I guess, like you said all the way through the conversation, really is the need to collaborate is so, so vital for learning from one another, understanding and also moving forward in a positive way as well. And with that in mind, I guess that that kind of spirit or culture that you have there, that you joined or decided to become a partner, founding partner for a manifesto, um, for more sustainable prim which is fantastic to have experts and businesses like yourself, cpi, involved and obviously you've become a partner what inspired that decision and why do you think perhaps this project or initiative matters?
Speaker 2:I think probably going back to my last point in that the industry hasn't got anything.
Speaker 2:So we all have different certifications and accreditations, but as an industry, we don't say we haven't got a hand up to say this is what we should be doing, this is what we as an industry feel is really important, to show that for tomorrow we're we're thinking about the things that we do today and how do we reduce our impact.
Speaker 2:And it's quite a simple manifesto. It's the minimum of what everyone should be doing, but it's saying well, actually we do think it's important and as an industry, we realize we have an impact and obviously, if people didn't print, let's reduce the impact completely, but that's not going to happen from a commercial point of view for those people. But it's about actually, are the printers they use, are they willing to sign up to these types of pledges? Are they willing to say that actually these things are important to us as an industry? That's where the manifesto allows us to come out of our silos of maybe the industry that we work with or the sector that we work in, to actually come together as an industry across multiple sectors, which is really unusual actually in our, I find, particularly so. That's the thing, I think, that particularly attracted us to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's brilliant because, like I said the first time, we were interviewing a leader from the book printing world. It just shows, and I was explaining the different industries, but print is literally probably about 30 different industries involved in some way shape or form, whether it's flooring, whether it's labels, whether it but don't see much beyond it. If that makes sense, yeah, and what goes into making those things happen? Well, listen, lisa, that's been super fascinating. It's fantastic to have you and CPI involved in the Manifesto project because it has a lot of positive expertise into the project, and you mentioned it being simple, and I think that's been one of the challenges, hasn't it? To demystify and simplify, and I yeah that that that is happening through exactly collaboration, which has been a theme of the chat, just sort of, I guess, closing really. Um, any final thoughts that you'd like to share on sustainability in the environment?
Speaker 2:I think just that as an oh and this is for all businesses, this isn't just ours is to keep it at the forefront of a business, because it can become very once you feel like you've got all your targets in place and things, you're all doing the right things.
Speaker 2:It's that, how do we keep momentum going? And that's the thing that I think the manifesto will help with some of that, because it's about okay, how do you measure yourself against that? Um, because that is, you know, the reason most of us work in any type of industry is because there's a budget of some description, and it's making sure that, um, that sustainability and whatever targets you have in place are almost at the same level as your, as your budgetary requirements. Um, because I think that, um, we tend to go in cycles um, as as humans, um and a topic is really important for a period of time and then it can wane, and it's trying to make sure that actually, this one can't um and um, and particularly, you know we see it in the world around us all the time. So I think it's about making sure that that businesses continue to see it at the, at the front of their business, rather than and um continue to push.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, because I think it. It's been treated as a side issue for many years, but that's changing. Clearly it's front and centre within CPI Group, hence why you're involved in the Manifesto project. Thank you for that. Thank you for joining us for this really interesting podcast, as I said, really fascinating to learn a bit more about book printing and appreciate your time and thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, thank you.
