Leeds flood-hit creative firm back in business after £300k of damage

A Leeds-based creative firm, which was hit by £300k of damage caused by a flood, is now back in business due to the help of IT solutions provider, Opal.

Vermillion, which provides reprographics, pre-press, design and data services to some of Europe’s best-known FMCG and home shopping brands, was nearly forced to close its doors after a five-foot flood swept through its premises.

Four Epson proofers, several Apple Macs, a physical server which contained three terabytes of data, and other hardware and software were completely destroyed.

However, Vermillion teamed up with Opal IT to replace vital hardware and develop a more efficient IT infrastructure that could better withstand threats posed by natural disasters such as a fire or flood.

Opal, which specialises in the integration of Apple and Microsoft products, built and reconfigured a new server for Vermillion within a matter of days.

Opal also sourced and installed replacement hardware, replaced firewalls and created a fully redundant and replicated virtualised environment that could protect Vermillion against future natural disasters and threats to security.

Since collaborating with Opal, Vermillion is now looking to grow its £1.2m turnover.

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.

“Our deep understanding and experience of creative production environments meant we could get Vermillion running again quickly. We’ll continue to provide ongoing support to Chris and his team and we’re confident that Vermillion will now go from strength to strength.”