Grafton printing shop broken into

Valley owner and operator Michael McIvor told ProPrint that the Grafton-based business lost a day of work repairing the damage from the break-in.

"They smashed through the front window, and it appears they were looking for cash," he said.

"We've got a big security fence with barbed wire on top of it surrounding the complex here, so they only took what they could carry," added McIvor.

McIvor said that when he heard about the break-in, his greatest concern was that the computers containing all of the company's business data would be damaged or stolen, but the machines were untouched.

"You do back-ups and everything, but you can still lose a lot of stuff, so that was the scariest bit, thinking that would be all gone," he said.

McIvor said the company would upgrade its security and back-up its computer systems again, in case another break-in should occur.

The break-in continues a difficult start to the year for McIvor, who had his house broken into twice over the Christmas break and his car torched last month.

Valley Signs and Printing, also known as Valley Marketing, has been operating in Grafton for three years, offering services such as garment, business card, shop sign and car sticker printing to the northern rivers and mid-north coast regions.

The company employs five people, and runs a four-colour screen printer and a heatset press, as well as outsourcing some of its full-colour work to trade printers.

McIvor comes from a printing tradition, starting in the industry as a teenager with his father, who continues to run Tableland Printing in the northern Queensland town of Atherton.

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