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By Alex GrantPrinters in Greenwich have slammed the organisers of the Millennium Dome for not using local companies to feed the exhibition's huge print requirements. Although an estimated #8m worth of business has gone to the Greenwich economy because of the Dome, local printers are complaining that they have hardly benefited at all, and are calling for urgent talks to see if more work can be put their way in 2000.In a letter from local business leaders to the Dome's print buyer, seen by Printing World, the New Millennium Experience Company (NMEC) stands accused of ignoring the huge print capacity on its doorstep, and not even giving local printers the chance to tender for jobs.Although Harmsworth Quays in nearby Bermondsey is printing a daily newspaper for Dome visitors, and Premier Metropolis in Docklands has a contract to print souvenir books, few printers in Greenwich itself have been so lucky. MCH Print Group in Charlton, just a mile from the Dome, printed 20,000 NMEC brochure packs a year ago, but says it has not been asked to tender for a single Dome-related job since."Greenwich print businesses have consistently expressed disappointment at the lack of opportunities which have been offered to them to tender for work," writes Jonathan Louth, chair of the Greenwich Waterfront Development Partnership's business forum. "These printers do not have expectations beyond merely being provided with the opportunity to tender - an opportunity which they feel has eluded them in the case of the Dome."According to Mr Louth, no-one has ever drawn up a definitive list of what local printers' capabilities are, even though the Greenwich print sector has the capacity "to deliver a contract of any size". Printers say they were promised lots of work from the Dome at meetings with the NMEC over the last few years. But they say that in the event, most of it has passed them by, because it is being placed through agencies rather than the NMEC's own print buyers, who might have sought to place it locally."Local printers are accustomed to working both individually and as consortia in order to deliver a quality service," writes Mr Louth. "Indeed, the larger print companies in Greenwich all operate modern B2 four-, five- and six-colour sheetfed presses, plus repro, finishing, storage and despatch."One such printer is Parvenu Press, just two miles from the Dome, which recently invested in a B1 KBA Rapida 105 press, but has only got a couple of small jobs from the Dome, and only through agencies. "We're disappointed," says Parvenu's production director Tony Rankin. "I think all the print buying is being done through agencies to save time, because the whole project has been behind schedule. No-one wanted print jobs handed out on a plate, but we did want to have a fair chance."Other local printers are less surprised at the outcome. "It would have been nice to have had the chance to tender," says a spokesman for screenprinter SMP. "But if it's all being handled by agencies - then what do you expect?"Printers had been encouraged to use Greenwich Local Labour & Business (GLL&B), a body set up to help local business benefit from the Dome, to seek out print contracts from the NMEC. But printers complain that GLL&B has increasingly become little more than an employment agency for jobs in hotels and catering, rather than a clearing house for manufacturing contracts as promised."I put it down to incompetence by the NMEC," says Terry Cunningham of Petragraphics, another Greenwich printer. "We'd been promised lots of print jobs since before the first of the Dome's foundations were laid. But the only work we've got has been via agencies, and has had nothing to do with the fact that we're so close by.""Printers are feeling really narked," says Ian Bridgeman, an LCP student who is researching the Dome's effect on the borough's printing industry. "There seems to be an arrogance about the NMEC. It doesn't like being interfered with."