IT HAS BEEN SAID the birth of the print industry was 1436, when goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg combined a screw press and pieces of his invention to make the Gutenberg press, the first printing press to incorporate movable type and mechanized inking.
Robert Nangle, owner of
Meridian Printing Inc. in East Greenwich, is continuing that tradition with completely new challenges 586 years later. With 40 employees reporting to him, and a wide variety of commercial and artistic printing projects to deliver each day, Nangle has helped Meridian Printing endure.
Nangle graduated from the University of Rhode Island with an accounting degree in 1982, then worked for a large printing company for several years before moving on to the food industry, where he spent time at Autocrat LLC, now Finlay Extracts and Ingredients USA Inc., in Lincoln, followed by Nature’s Best Dairy in Cranston.
The skills Nangle gained in meeting strict production quotas while managing the employees who helped meet them brought him to Meridian Printing. After rising to vice president of the company, Nangle bought Meridian Printing in 2002.
The capital investments required to keep his company on the leading edge of printing technology are significant, Nangle says. An offset press, which uses a metal plate to transfer the text or image to be printed to a rubber “blanket” that is mounted on heavy iron rollers that do the printing, can cost more than $3 million, Nangle says, while an industrial-grade digital printer, which uses toner or liquid ink, depending on what the printing job calls for, can cost $750,000 or more.
But these investments help Meridian serve a diverse customer base, including commercial printing services for items such as letterheads, brochures and programs.
Meridian Printing also specializes in fine art photography and fine art print services.
“We work with museums and artists,” Nangle said. “The most important parts of my job are having good people skills and multitasking.”
To augment work done for art galleries and museums, Meridian Printing also serves the academic and university communities.
The company is also committed to the use of clean, renewable energy as part of a responsible corporate approach to doing business, which it accomplishes through a three-pronged approach with its use of paper, electricity and ink.
In the case of paper, Meridian worked with the Forest Stewardship Council to earn its Chain of Custody Certification, representing responsible forest management. In addition, 100% of the emissions of the power used to operate the facility are offset with credits from certified wind power. In the case of ink, Meridian uses linseed-oil organic inks, and all unusable ink is recycled and shipped back to its ink partner to resell to lower-end printers.
Meridian Printing is open five days a week, but Nangle says “flex” days are often added, depending on the need.
“We have had many of the same employees working here for many years,” Nangle said. “Customers like knowing employees over time and that allows us to serve them better.”
