Customer demand pushes Standard Publishing to open North Sydney store

Managing director Neil Armstrong told ProPrint that his company had finished moving Rapid’s kit from its former Artarmon site to SPH’s plant in Strathfield, and had leased the factory next door to accommodate its paper stocks

Rapid’s plant list included two Xerox iGen3 colour machines, a Xerox Nuvera machine, and several Xerox Docutechs. SPH bought Rapid out of administration in March.

“Moving all the iGens and Docutechs, it’s been a big job,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said SPH’s new retail presence in North Sydney would help fill the void left by Rapid’s move. “The store keeps Rapid Digital’s presence in the lower north shore, as well as giving us a retail presence.”

“We spoke to a few of their customers and they said they wanted a presence in the lower north shore, so if we moved everything to Strathfield we would have lost a lot of customers.”

“People have said we’re nuts because North Sydney has the largest population of digital printers in the country, but it’s been successful in the past there, and it fits with our plan to maintain a north shore presence,” he added.

The company is also leasing a Xerox 700 digital colour press (pictured) and another Xerox B&W machine to be housed at the North Sydney store, to allow it to complete orders on-site as well as taking orders for the Strathfield factory.

Armstrong said the company was now also “dipping its toe” in the self-publishing market.

The company is currently reviewing several presses for short-run book and manuscript printing. Armstrong recently visited Wellington-based Astra Printing to get a look at the Screen Truepress Jet 520 installed there earlier this year.

Meanwhile, SPH is taking part in the next round of Printing Industries’ Sustainable Green Print (SGP) program, which begins next week.

SPH said it had already taken steps to reduce its carbon footprint, such as organising its suppliers to make fewer deliveries with greater volumes, turning off equipment overnight and using conference calls and Skype to reduce staff travel.

The company will be working towards Level 2 certification within the program with the aid of a consultant.

“The PIAA appeared to have a good model,” Armstrong said. “It was a model that was targeted at the needs of the printing industry, as opposed to some of the generic business programs out there, so it made sense.”

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