Every business reaches a point where it hits an opportunity ceiling. There comes a time when the company can’t achieve more unless it undergoes a major restructure.
While most printers had a morose year in 2009, Pettaras Press managed to expand amid the downturn. It recently moved operations to purpose-built premises in Padstow, south-west Sydney, and underwent a major production upgrade with a 10-colour Komori Lithrone 1040P press.
The new 11,500m2 premises boasts offices and production office areas specially designed to fit the company’s production flow. According to director Steve Pettaras, the decision to uproot the company boiled down to a single factor.
“I realised that either I consolidate, which would have meant a reduction in staff and staying where we were, or make a solid commitment to expanding and invest to take Pettaras Press to the next level,” he says.
“Although our business is fortunate to have loyal and talented staff, I knew the decision to invest a considerable amount of money was going to be challenging.
“I realised I’d need strong management and dedicated staff to do this, so some management changes had to be made,” he explains.
Next level
“Taking the business to the next level required a considerable investment into new equipment, in particular the 10-colour Komori,” says Pettaras.
“As existing space was limited, I had no option but to locate premises that would accommodate our growth phase. After nearly two years of searching, we found our new home at Padstow. I was pleasantly surprised and relieved when we didn’t have any resignations.
Pettaras explains that he wanted to make sure the staff had a comfortable workplace. “Part of this included building a fully equipped games room and gymnasium for the staff.”
The Australian print production model has changed considerably in the past few years, with many medium-sized sheetfed companies merging or being swallowed by private equity. This has not gone unnoticed by Pettaras. “We looked at how business is changing, especially with procurement companies and larger blue chips changing how they do business,” he says.
“We looked at our end of the market, in the high-end quality market, and how we fitted in. We were always getting a bottleneck in busy periods, and we couldn’t compete against the larger print companies. The 10-colour has changed this, and we have become a large-volume, versatile business that offers quick response times.”
Starting out
Like many print businesses, Pettaras Press started because a young printer decided to back himself. “I worked for a lot of printing companies and then decided to work for myself, so I bought a 1969 two-colour, size-five manroland press and worked with that at Greenacre,” says Pettaras.
“Two years later, I got two partners involved in the business, and they were with me from 1992 to 2004. We’ve just celebrated being in business for 20 years.”
Pettaras Press runs a five-colour Lithrone, a six-colour Lithrone and now a 10-colour perfector. “The reason we got the 10-colour is for long-run specialty work. We can do seven- and eight-colour work with varnishes, to add something different to the high-end market,” he says.
The company also runs an HP Indigo 5000 digital press, bought last year. Moving into digital hadn’t been a priority for Pettaras, but he was turned around at Drupa in 2008.
“We bought the Indigo 5000 before we made the move. I initially didn’t want to get into digital, but seeing the machine at Drupa 2008 and what it was producing, I bought it. Less than a year later, we won Digital Printer of the Year at the NSW Print Excellence Awards.”
The company is the forefront of standardised colour management. All its presses have been awarded PSO certification through Fogra, including the HP Indigo 5000, which gained PSD certification late last year. “We’ve just been through PSO compliance with the 10-colour, with Yves Roussange of Colourprocess. That has been a real eye-opener for perfecting, to control dot gain,” says Pettaras.
“We were the first company in Australia to get both PSO and PSD certification. I’m very proud of my team with what they can do in both offset and digital. You’ve got to have the right people behind the scenes to get everything worked out, and the operators understanding what they can achieve.”
Steve Pettaras’s business model has always honed in on quality work and exemplary customer service, and he takes a pragmatic approach to winning new contracts. He has a firm policy on only producing work if he can charge the right price – and admits this “line
in the sand” has meant missing out on some jobs.
“We’re not there to run 24/7. We’re there to make a fair and reasonable margin for our work. I would rather sleep at night knowing that the machine’s not running than knowing it’s running but I’m not making any margin,” he says.
Recipe for success
“The recipe for a successful business is to make sure there is enough profit there to put into the bank to cover yourself and be able to upgrade the machines, and repair them,” says Pettaras.
“If you run the business on the smell of an oily rag, then you’re doing everything just for cash flow, and a good businessman doesn’t run it just for cash flow but to have something for the long term,” he adds.
Long-term thinking also fits into the company’s “critically important” maintenance programme.
“Our 2003 model Lithrone prints better than any brand new press out there on the market; that shows in all the awards we win,” says Pettaras.
But it’s not just machines that need to be treated well. “If the morale isn’t there in your workforce, then the quality of work isn’t going to be there either.”
Customer service manager Geoff Milverton backs this up. His role meant he could have been in the line of fire from clients when the company moved and updated its inventory. “Steve has never chased a job based on price. You lose some jobs from time to time because of price and they go somewhere else, but soon they realise they really are getting what they paid for. It might be cheap now but they pay in other ways in the end.
“Getting over here to Padstow was managed very well. Steve said he didn’t want any clients disadvantaged, and they weren’t. The new 10-colour was up and running before any of the other presses were shut down. I don’t think a single client suffered from a missed deadline.
We might have had our fights internally to get them done, but we achieved all the deadlines. I don’t think there would be many privately owned companies that would contemplate doing what Steve has done in the last 12 months.”
Investing in new capital equipment when both money and work are tight takes some nerve, but Steve Pettaras was committed to his long-term plan. “I’ve always found that whenever we made a big investment like this, it’s always been an advantage to us afterwards. We’ve won a lot of business since moving to Padstow. The style of work coming in now is high-end specialty work, and also some packaging work, which is great.
“You’ve got to have a 10-year projection of where you think the business will go. I’m really interested in digital, and I’m looking at expanding our digital area. I think in the next year or so there is going to be some unbelievable digital equipment coming out,” says Pettaras.
“I’m a printer. I love what I do and I’m proud of what I do. That’s my story.”
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