Leonardt are based at Highley in Shropshire, UK.
As I understand it in the heyday of nib manufacturing before automated presses, every single nib was inspected by trained "lookers-over", and graded as either perfect, a second or scrap. After automation arrived, the norm was to inspect a given percentage of each batch, and out of that sample if a low enough proportion were scrap the whole lot was passed. This form of batch inspection was governed by a British Standards Specification; Leonardt are now ISO 9000: 2008 registered, so the BSS no longer obtains and one can only assume that even that limited procedure is no longer followed.
The current Principal problem strikes me as a major QC failure which simply should never have gone undetected given even minimal sampling and inspection. The LPef is an expensive product (nowhere more so than in its home market, by the way), and this is justified by its superior quality. Allowing a whole substandard batch onto the open market is bad enough, but for the misaligned slitting to carry over onto the Walker Fine Writer run (for which the stamp tooling must have been changed, so you'd expect everything to be checked at that point) is a huge blunder. I cannot imagine this happening in, say, a German factory.
If that job was was on offer, I'd apply for it.
