What is surprising is that, despite the shrinking of the number of Australian printing firms, print volumes are stable or even slightly growing. This can mean only one thing; the market is being served by more automated, higher productivity technology, manned by fewer people.
My great-grandfather Alexander worked as a compositor on the London Times, having moved from Scotland in 1880. He married at Southwark Cathedral and my grandfather was born soon after on the Old Kent Road; my father being born further down that road in Kent itself. I, however moved to Australia in 1975 and have worked in the graphic arts and printing ever since, apart from a nostalgic stint of 4 years in the 1990s back in Blighty where I worked on Ipex ‘93 amongst other things.
So, this month’s blog is about the Australian printing, packaging and related industries – timely in view of the fact the ‘drupa of the South Seas’ is on from May 23-26. It’s called PacPrint and, like drupa, is held every four years. This year it has combined with a signage and wide-format show called Visual Impact; a wise move as suppliers to this side of the industry such as EFI, Epson, HP, Agfa, Roland DG, Mimaki, Mutoh, SwissQPrint and OKI comprise a sizeable part of the trade fair.
PacPrint scene 2013
Combining the events has helped, to a certain extent; to make up for the absence of the offset manufacturer who was once the largest exhibitor – Heidelberg. The ‘no regional shows’ policy of the cash-strapped German manufacturer extended to Australia/New Zealand for PacPrint 2012 as well – just as it did to Ipex 2014. It’s not just Heidelberg; Manroland and KBA have also decided not to exhibit at PacPrint 2017.
Only Ryobi, through its agent Cyber has elected to show an offset press - an A1-size 920 St-4c. Komori's agent via Print & Pack is on the floorplan but the size of its stand suggests there will be no offset press shown. This will be the first PacPrint since its founding in 1951 that only one offset press : and must be seen as a reflection of our changing industry. All of the mega-stands at PacPrint are from digital imaging giants such as Xerox, HP, Konica-Minolta, Ricoh, Canon plus a dynamic local distributor named Starleaton who represents EFI, Epson, OKI, Zünd, X-Rite plus a host of the world’s best consumable brands – all wide-format.
I worked on marketing PacPrint 1996 which was the first large-scale show in what was then the new Melbourne Exhibition Centre – a marvelous pillarless ‘shed’ of 30,000 square metres gross. It filled the entire area. 21 years later in 2017, despite the combining with another show, PacPrint is half of that size at around 15,000 sqm gross.
Centrum 2nd KBA goes in
In many ways, Australia (and New Zealand) can be seen as bellwethers of the way industries might move in western economies, particularly printing. This is because of a combination of smaller, more remote populations, relatively affluent and an inherent capacity to innovate and adapt to changes so as to ‘not be left behind.’
An example – in the 1980s I helped introduce the ‘One Hour’ photo-processing into Australia. These mini-labs sprung up all over the country and were scoffed at by the ‘maxi-labs’ who collected the film from pharmacies, supermarkets and photo stores; centrally developed and printed it and returned it a few days later. By 1985, Australia had more one-hour mini labs operating than the entire USA. By 1998 there were no more ‘maxi labs.’ Today only mini-lab digital kiosks remain; mostly supplied by Fujifilm.
The genesis of HP’s Indigo was here in Australia; so is MEMS-based inkjet with Memjet. As an aside, you can thank Australia’s CSIRO research organization for Wi-Fi. This is not to boast; it is to support the ‘bellwether’ theory.
The head of PacPrint’s largest exhibitor, David Currie of Currie Group, agents for HP Indigo, Horizon, Cron, Omet and more, estimates that in the 1990s, he had over 12,000 companies he could sell to. Today, he says it’s around 2 or 3,000. His offset press supplier – Shinohara – ceased business in 2011 and was subsequently acquired by the Chinese Hans Gronhi company, but with HP Indigo on a roll, Currie elected not to continue in offset.
The Printing Industry Association’s government-funded Print21 initiative started in 1999 and predicted that the number of operators of Australian businesses in printing would drop by 50% over the following decade. As the new millennium took hold, sure enough businesses started closing, falling over and the carpetbaggers of private equity firms and phoenix operators moved in to exploit, rather than help, the change agenda.
Consolidation continues even today but in a more controlled manner, as evinced by the recent mergers of Australia’s two largest print groups – PMP and IPMG and the consolidation of our 3 largest independent web printers – BlueStar, Franklin Web and AIW - into one exchange-listed group renamed IVE Group. The people behind all of these companies are seasoned print veterans and know both web and sheetfed operations intimately. There is even some re-investment happening with a new order for an 80-page Manroland Lithoman to go with a 16-page Rotoman in a greenfield site resulting from the IVE Group mergers. Sydney’s Centrum Printing this year added a KBA 145 to its existing KBA 162.
What is surprising however is that despite the shrinking of the number of Australian printing firms, print volumes are stable or even slightly growing. This can mean only one thing; the market is being served by more automated, higher productivity technology, manned by fewer people. Imports of offset plates actually increased in 2016; attributable to better economic conditions plus more job-changes on 6, 8 and 10 colour presses, as run lengths shorten.
A colleague, one of Australia’s leading used equipment dealers puts is succinctly as only Aussie plainspeak can: “Twenty years ago I was bringing in containers of offset presses from all over the world, now I’m shipping them out.”
At the same time, ANZ has one of the highest penetration-per-capita of HP Indigos and iGens in the world. Wide format, particularly flatbed UV, is also growing in both machine installations and volumes. A leading corrugated packaging firm – Abbe Corrugated – installed a Spanish Barberan inkjet last year for short-run carton work, something that other packagers are looking at with Inca Digital, HP Scitex, Durst and EFI Nozomi. On a smaller scale, thousands of former signwriters and screen printers are now digital businesses with Epsons, HPs, Rolands, Canons and some have even moved into cut-sheet commercial print.
There are still many fine, successful offset printing companies in Australia but they are increasingly the ones with the latest automated presses and highly advanced MIS and workflows from the likes of Tharstern, Optimus, Accura and EFI. Another colleague who specializes in print recruitment reports an increased enquiry rate from the UK for migratory positions in the Australian industry.
With the recent administration of Antons coupled with Brexit, this trend faces a further surge. Will these applicants find greener grass down under? The same recruiter says that he must deal with far more red-tape to get fully qualified UK people in than elsewhere. It’s something to do with UN quotas. Mind you, if you are under 55, have owned or operated a business and have portable assets of over $800,000; it’s a lot easier to get the right visa. Investors from India have bought and are successfully running several Australian print businesses. Sponsored skilled migrant visas are a lot harder.
In a nutshell, Australia’s printing industry still employs around 35,000 people and is worth AUD$8 billion a year in sales: $13 billion when value-added is considered (click here to read the source article).
As a bellwether of western printing, the pointers from ANZ are:
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