Customers can now use the national chain's new online portal to place "lowest-prices guaranteed" orders for documents, business cards, banners, posters and photos.

Most jobs are produced at a jointly-managed print hub in North Rocks, Sydney, which opened in January 2010. Officeworks would not reveal the identity of its print partner.

National merchandise manager Phil Bishop told ProPrint: "The Officeworks print and copy site is powered by a custom-developed software application that enables us to take consumer and business print orders online and process them either in-store or at our print hub and have them delivered within two to seven days."

Bishop said Officeworks' print sales have been enjoying a 40% year-to-year revenue rise in 2012-13.

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"The growth of our print and copy offer, including our online hub, is a key focus for Officeworks moving forward," he said.

"While the exact scale and value of the business is commercially sensitive, we have experienced strong sales and volume growth since making significant investments in-store and, most recently, with our new online platform… We expect this trend to continue throughout the [financial] year."

Bishop said most of the hub's equipment is from Fuji Xerox, including two 700 digital colour presses, a B&W 4127, a B&W Nuvera and an LF6605 wide-format printer along with a Canon ImagePrograf iPF8300S wide-format device.

The seven-staff hub also runs Magnapunch binding equipment, a hole-punching drill, trimmer, laminating equipment, a high-capacity business card cutter and a high-capacity folding machine, he added.

Officeworks' 147 stores are also able to print orders on-site, although some work is pushed on to the hub and other specialty requests, such as canvas prints, photobooks and offset runs, are outsourced to unnamed trade printers, said Bishop.

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