The case for quality

In the meeting room at Eastern Press, a sheetfed offset and digital company located on a leafy crescent at Mulgrave in Melbourne’s east, managing director Frank Hilliard is philosophical about the changes that have swept over his industry.

It’s a far cry from the printing world he entered as an apprentice on the other side of the world in Dublin, where he cut his teeth at security print house Thomas Delarue, which at the time pressed some 90 per cent of the world’s banknotes. It is also a very different industry to the one in which he chanced his arm 31 years ago when, as a recent arrival in Australia, he bought out a small print firm in Melbourne’s Springvale.

The company’s Chinese owners had close links with the growing Chinese community of the eastern suburbs and they printed work for the local Chinese Chamber of Commerce. Hilliard’s ownership of the company began on a jarring note when the sole printer employed there announced he’d won the Lotto and was quitting. Hilliard hired new staff and sold two ageing Multiliths he had acquired in the purchase. He sold them for $8,000, the same amount he’d plunked down to buy the company – and that was his first heartening experience with the deal.

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So began Eastern Press in 1983 – a company that got its first leg-up when Hilliard mortgaged his house to buy his first GTO. Those were the years when he ran purely on his wiles – he fondly recalls that his first Heidelberg GTO, a 52, was actually a loaner from Seligson & Clare, the Heidelberg vendor, while he organised his finances and waited until a GTO 46 he wanted to buy became available. He half jokes that he was glum when the time came to return the borrowed 52 and start making payments on the 46.

He gradually expanded his line-up of one and two-colour GTOs, printing jobs for local hospitals and later taking on trade printing.

The family-owned company – Frank’s wife Irene Hilliard is now its administration manager – moved home a few times through Melbourne’s southeast. The journey went from Springvale, to Huntingdale, to Clayton, then in 1997 to its present-day 2,000 sqm premises with 34 staff at Mulgrave.

Over the years, Eastern Press developed a reputation for premium quality litho print delivered on hairpin turnarounds. Hilliard identifies quality and timeliness as the hallmarks that have withstood a tsunami of change in the industry.

Hilliard points to tumbling sheetfed print volumes worldwide and the explosion in electronic communications, but while he is wary, he remains unfazed. “Eastern is

an innovative company that is focused on providing business-smart solutions to its client base. Whether that is through bespoke online solutions allowing clients to order anything from a pack of business cards to a pair of safety goggles or through highly targeted 1:1 marketing campaigns featuring innovative print pieces, Eastern has the technology and knowhow to deliver.”

The portfolio at Eastern Press is comprehensive – brochures for prestige cars, point-of-sale collateral, boutique packaging, marketing materials from colour brochures, calendars and corporate stationery, to specialised form cutting and watermarks.

There are fine-arts books in both short run digital or medium run offset. There’s security printing, a legacy of Hilliard’s years spent in that sector.

Eastern applies the same high standards to its digital output as it does to its offset and is enthusiastic about some of the digital work it has been given the opportunity to produce, from short-run bespoke books, to personalised brochures fully laden with variable content throughout, where each copy is recognisably different to the last.

There are highly targeted pieces to different market segments, geographical regions and other key demographics. Says Hilliard: “To be a genuine extension of our clients’ business, we must continue to provide smart products that better allow them to connect with their clients and consequently grow their brand.”  

All of this comes to the gold standard – and Eastern Press has an impressive collection of National Print Awards gold medals and led the tally with six golds at the Victorian PICAs late last year, where it regularly finishes highly ranked.

The work is time sensitive, and this is where quality printers in Australia can protect themselves from offshore encroachment on their services, asserts Hilliard.

Additionally, Eastern Press has branched into print management, providing distribution, storage, mail house services, promotional and PPE, and Pick & Pack

services. Says Hilliard: “Providing a customer with efficient ancillary services can strengthen the relationship and protect you from losing the customer to competitors on price.”

The company offers its customers online ordering, with a Storefront system integrated into its MIS. Its comprehensive prepress division is based on a Kodak Prinergy workflow.

Its Heidelberg pressroom features a Speedmaster XL75 and coater, bought in late 2012, and a SM52 Anicolor, the first sold in the southern hemisphere. The Anicolor’s short-inking anilox units enable lightning fast inking-up, giving extreme flexibility in turnaround times while maintaining colour consistency.

Two years ago, Eastern  Press committed to digital in a big way, adding an HP Indigo 3550 for short-run jobs and for variable data. Cormac Deffely, the company’s general manager, has brought his IT background to the table, introducing the knowhow required for variable data printing.

Deffely also brought in his digital printing and online solutions acumen, and he is keen to further develop Eastern’s offerings in these areas. Embracing the digital age and offering complimentary services is an essential part of the future strategy of Eastern Press. Says Deffely: “The pace of technological advancement and innovation is relentless and those caught napping will fall behind, to the long-term detriment of their business.”

The company runs a well-featured bindery, stocked with two Heidelberg Cylinders and a Platen and a gloss/matt laminator, shrinkwrapping and polybagging, saddle-stitching, perfect, burst and wire binding. Its embossing and UV work is generally outsourced to the trade – and its Mulgrave location places it in a handy ambit to some of the top names in trade binding and speciality work – like The Bindery and Avon Graphics.

“Over the years, I’ve said we probably do too much of a variety of work and I’ve asked myself whether that’s good or whether it makes us inefficient. Nowadays we tend to specialise more,” says Hilliard. And while the strategy is to find additional customers for its specialties, he believes in remaining versatile enough to provide a full service to valued customers.

For example, if a customer wants business cards added to the package, it can be done, although there are no margins on stock-standard cards. But anything – or almost anything – for a valued client; that’s his motto.

A major aspect of Eastern’s success appears to be Hilliard’s ability to assemble the best and brightest in his management line-up. Working with Cormac Deffely is Alastair Troedel as national sales manager – Troedel’s  name is linked to a fifth-generation Australian printing family and one of Australia’s oldest family companies in print, William Troedel & Co, which vanished  in 2013, just a year after its merger with Melbourne digital outfit Docucopy. Troedel works with a strong and focused sales team driven to deliver high service levels to their clients.

The Geon collapse proved fortuitous for Eastern Press’s management muscle, enabling it to snare the services of Amanda Tailford and Paul Gray. Tailford was a key player at Geon in the push to automate the prepress workflow and is applying those smarts in her new role as Eastern’s prepress manager. Gray has over 30 years in print, having served as operations manager at Southern Colour and Interprint previously, and is now bringing his experience to bear on Eastern as he drives efficiencies on the factory floor as production manager.

In 2011, Eastern Press began an 18-month Lean & Green program coordinated by Printing Industries. Each member of staff spent around 60 hours in training sessions, learning a whole-of-business approach to trimming costs, increasing profits, improving customer service and enhancing quality by identifying and removing all forms of waste, from time and process to handling and materials.

Under the hood, Eastern is also working hard to further develop its systems integration and the streamlining of its administration processes through smart use of data and automation wherever possible. It is a never ending process, but

each step along the path further hones the efficiency of the organisation. With the margin erosion that has occurred in the market recently, to increase revenue whilst more effectively using staff and plant must be the goal, argues Deffely.

Hilliard is upbeat about the future of sheetfed in Australia and believes the industry has turned the corner from the GFC years. He says while overall volumes are down, Eastern Press is now starting to receive some of the accounts tied down by Geon.

“Short-run, high-quality printing is as weatherproof as things can be”, he says. “It’s still our core business – people still want to see a brochure, feel it, have something in hand and with our ability to provide peripheral services such as online services and personalised print, we feel that we are well positioned for the future.”

Hilliard is conscious of the trend against volume in Australian commercial sheetfed. “We haven’t gone in for long perfectors because that is not where the industry is heading,” he says, mindful that kitting out for volume and struggling to reach capacity on the press is not a route he wants to take.

“A customer recently asked for a job of 50 units of a case bound book complete with solander box. We went a step further and offered 100 for only 10 percent more on the price, but we were told that 50 was definitely all they wanted – regardless of price. At the end of the campaign, they still had 10 books left, because the campaign was so efficiently targeted. That’s the way it works today.”

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