So much for the green Olympic Games as tickets for London 2012 will be printed in the U.S. & flown to Britain

[richard]

Tickets for London 2012 will be printed in the USA and shipped 4,500 miles back to Britain.

A multi-million-pound contract to print the tickets has controversially been awarded to a firm based in America.

The decision to hand the deal to the ‘Wild West’ town of Fort Smith, in Arkansas, was branded ‘a kick in the guts to British firms’ and flies in the face of a pledge to be ‘the greenest Games ever’.

Weldon, Williams & Lick will print 11million tickets before shipping the 16-ton cargo to a UK warehouse.

British ticketholders will then be charged a £6 delivery charge to receive their tickets in the post.

The revelation comes just days after the Mail revealed that just nine per cent of £1bn worth of Olympics merchandise has been produced in the UK.

Tony Hallet, account manager at CCS McLays, one of the UK’s leading print brokers, said he did not believe any UK companies had been asked to pitch for the contract.
The news makes a mockery of claims the London games would be the greenest Olympics ever

The news makes a mockery of claims the London games would be the greenest Olympics ever

He said: ‘It is typical of our country. The Yanks would never give it to us, or, if the Olympics were in France UK companies would not get the contract.’ He added that home-grown companies could have easily coped with the high volume of tickets.

Arkansas is the birthplace of singer Johnny Cash and President Bill Clinton, who also served as governor of the southern state for 12 years.

The town of Fort Smith features in the Coen Brothers’ western film, True Grit.

Andrew Cave, spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses, said: ‘Businesses in Britain will be wondering what the benefits are of hosting the Olympics when so many contracts are being awarded abroad.

‘This was supposed to be the greenest Olympics in history, but it is not very environmentally friendly to ship the tickets half way across the world.

‘The Games should have been used as a showroom for British industry, so it is extremely disappointing that even the tickets have been procured overseas.’

Integrity, one of the UK’s leading printing companies which has supplied tickets for Premiership football matches and major rugby matches, said they had been asked to print other forms for London 2012, but not tickets.

Lawrence Webb, UKIP’s candidate for London Mayor, said: ‘We were sold the idea of the London Olympics on the basis that it would benefit the British and London economy but this latest development is just another empty promise.

‘This is a kick in the guts to British firms who would have been desperate to secure such a lucrative contract but it looks like they did not even get the opportunity to bid.

‘There seems to be a track record in this country of not putting British businesses first.

‘We have seen it with Bombardier in Derby and now we are seeing it with the London Olympics where an American company gets the contract to print tickets.’

A spokesman for London 2012 organisers Locog said: ‘The contract to print tickets was awarded following a thorough, competitive and open tender run through Compete For (tendering website).

‘As with all of our contracts, a number of criteria are considered including the experience of working on projects of this scale, security, ability to handle large amounts of data and value for money.

‘Across the project, the Games has been good news for UK plc with 95 per cent of contracts going to British business.’

Weldon, Williams & Lick’s clients includes US-owned Ticketmaster, the agency which runs London 2012’s ill-fated ticket sales website.

Last week, it emerged that 17 items out of 194 sold on the official website were made in the UK.

China made 62 per cent of the merchandise, Turkey made nine per cent and the Philippines made four per cent.

Countries such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, Poland, Slovakia and Germany made the rest, including T-shirts, bags, hats, toys and games.

Even firms which have been established in UK for up to 250 years, including Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, Johnson Brothers and Dartington Crystal, produced much of their merchandise abroad.


Source
By LOUISE ECCLES
www.dailymail.co.uk