Weekly report: week 1 of the internship

This week in the company was as an introduction. First on Monday I needed to go to Future Focus (the bureau that arranged the company and accommodation). A lot of other students were also there for the first time to meet Miss Galea and to get an explanation of the period that we are here. Miss Galea told us all the rules, the expectations they had of us and what we could expect from them. Then another lady of Future Focus drove me and some other students past the company, so that I knew where I needed to get off the bus and where I could take the bus back when I am finished at work.
The next day I needed to go to the company myself. When I came there I met my supervisor David Borg. He told me something about the company and then he called Nicolai, because I would be working for him. I met a lot of people from his department and then I got a tour from another guy in the company. He showed me around the company and the press area. Which is really big and overwhelming, because there are a lot of different machines. It was really interesting to see how for example a book gets made, because now I could see everything that gets involved in this process. They have 2-colour presses that produce 12.000 sheets per hour, 4-colour presses that produce 9.000 sheets per hour and the book production is about 150.000 per week. The most part of the production goes to the United Kingdom. It is about 60% of everything that they make.
The next day and the days after that I did research on companies in the United Kingdom that are involved in the same activities as Gutenberg Press. They are listed in a big file of a niche market research. I needed to list the contact information, some important people of the company, like the managing director and a short story about the company itself, what they do or offer. In these few days I can notice that I have improved on the research, because it goes a lot faster than when I started and I know now where to look for the information. I also learned a lot more about the sector that also Gutenberg Press works in. During the research I could compare the services of the companies and I saw that most of them offer the same kind of service and products.
What is very interesting is that the company is trying to penetrate the European market and now they are focussing on the Netherlands and also on Italy, but there they have not had that much success. In the Netherland they have a person of the company that works from there and they are actually producing the Sonja Bakker books here in the company. To get more success in the Netherlands they would like to use me, because I can understand better what the people want and say. So this is something I look forward to a lot.