The party marked the official opening of Brandpack’s custom-built Braeside facility in south-eastern Melbourne.
Concept designers and graphic artists, along with pre-press operators, have been working out of the custom-built greenfields site on Woodlands Drive since 1 July.
Guests were treated to the biting wit of Greg Champion of Aussie Rules satirical group the Coodabeen Champions and to the music of musical quartet No Strings Attached.
Brandpack was born after Colorpak rebranded and relocated Mount Waverley-based Montage Graphics.
Montage had been a subsidiary of Carter Holt Harvey (CHH), which Colorpak acquired in March 2011, capping an acquisition trail of six businesses in the past 12 years.
The acquisition and restructure of CHH’s Australian folding cartons business was a considerable investment and drove the company’s reported 2011-12 loss of $3.2 million, said Colorpak managing director Alex Commins.
Commins described the former Montage Graphics as “one of the gems buried within the Carter Holt Harvey business”.
He traced Montage’s journey from “films, Cromalin proofs, plates that took hours to produce and presses costing millions of dollars standing idle, waiting for a low-cost consumable in order to get running again”, to the adoption of CTP and now flexo digital processes.
“The new building you’re standing in tonight is one of the more concrete reminders of the absolute flurry of activity undertaken by our team since March last year.”
Brandpack general manager Peter Allison, who joined Colorpak from CHH last year, said: “We have come a long way as Montage. We started out more than 10 years ago. If you look at the investment we’ve made here, not just on the financial side but from an industry perspective, what we’ve committed to is pretty significant and very impressive.
“Not only have we invested in hardware but in software. Take a look at the 3D visualisation software we’ve installed and are starting to roll out and use with a number of customers,” he said.
“It’s really one of our aims to take a customer from concept to store in one place on the same day in an extremely competitive retail environment.”
Visitors were given the opportunity to peruse Brandpack’s technologies in construction, pre-press, materials selection and finishing, including Esko Kongsberg diecutting and Epson proofing, used for POS displays and packaging in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and the food industry.
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