Wonderbly, the personalised book publisher, has won the King’s Enterprise Award for International Trade in the 2024 roll call of 252 winning businesses. While not a print business, and no printer won across Innovation, Sustainable Development or International Trade, the publisher relies on digital print to deliver personalised books across the world.
It started in 2013 as LostMyName with children’s titles of that name. The child becomes a character in the story collecting the letters that spell out his or her name in a well printed hardcover book. This spawned similar titles and more ambitious collaborations with Wizarding World Digital for books with a Harry Potter theme.
The company has produced 9 million books for children in more than 200 countries and has expanded into titles of adults and special occasions such as Mother’s Day. It acquired Historic Newspapers, an archive of more than 2 million newspapers dating back 120 years, at the end of last year to provide further content for personalised publications.
In the UK, Pureprint, Charlesworth and Precision Printing have been suppliers, working to perfect the workflows and quality control checks to ensure that book of one production is possible.
In the Innovation category of the King’s Award for Enterprise, breakthrough sustainable packaging business Frugalpac was selected for developing “the world’s first and only commercially available paper bottle for wine and spirit, decarbonising the drinks industry”. The paper bottle is becoming a frequent sight on supermarket shelves in both the UK and overseas. last year, the company was invited to show the bottles at a trade event hosted by the King and Queen in Bordeaux, the heart of the French wine industry.
The paper bottles offer far more opportunities for print than a standard label and being paper based, are more easily recyclable. The bottle gains additional carbon credentials by being far lighter than standard glass bottles.
Frugalpac CEO Malcolm Waugh says: “Working with likeminded stakeholders around the world, we’re realising our vision of establishing Frugal Bottle hubs around the world to produce our paper bottles to help decarbonise the global wine and spirits industry.
“From our Ipswich base, our goal continues to be to save the planet one bottle at a time by cutting the carbon footprint of wine and spirits bottles by 84%. We’re also delighted that His Majesty and Her Majesty have seen our Frugal Bottles at first hand and we hope they enjoyed the wine!”
Nuneaton Signs was recognised in the newest of the categories, Promoting Opportunity (through social mobility). The business began as a social enterprise to help disabled people into work and is not a multi million pound signage production business where two-thirds of the 79 employees have a recognised disability.
