Image credit: Roy Morgan Research
The Visual Media Association (VMA) will use new research that shows more than four in five local business buy Australian made wherever possible to lobby for further onshoring of print.
Newly released research from Roy Morgan, which surveyed a number of business decision-makers from a cross-section of Australian industries, found that the ‘Australian first’ sentiment related to better value for money and higher quality products.
VMA CEO Kellie Northwood told Sprinter the trend towards ‘onshoring’ or preferring to source products locally rather than from overseas has been further influenced since the pandemic where consumers have understood the value of jobs and the economy of local manufacturing.
“The visual media industry across all sectors that we represent are manufacturing in Australia and employing 229,194 Australians across the country in various skilled and unskilled roles in regional and metropolitan areas. In short, print and signage is Australia made and we should communicate this to our marketing customers, many of whom promote Australian Made partnerships,” Northwood said.
“In addition to understanding consumer sentiment, we will look to using this research to add to our communication into government to call on the eradication of offshored print procurement from federal and state government departments.
“Specifically, we challenge the government procurement practice of using print management partnerships which do not define Australian made only supply chain partners. IBISWorld reports $340 million of print work is off-shored annually, and when we break this figure down through our industry Insights surveying, we determined the combination of publishing, noting cook-books made up a large majority of off-shore book publishing, signage, including a double-digit percentage of fabric flags, and government print work.
“Our breakdown believes government offshored print work to sit at approximately $80-110 million per annum – in my mind that is $80-$110 million too much, and we will continue to advocate into government in this regard,” commented Northwood.
“Government departments prefer to share the government print work across many organisations, and thus the print management modelling is more common than direct print company contracts. Print management groups also offer single supply management and standardised reporting. However, once the print manager is selected, it has been found that the government procurement departments may not be specifying or rating higher for the products to be produced in Australia, rather the contract KPIs lean more closely to cost reduction targets.
“As an industry we know that the estimated cost is not the only measure to which government should be assessing. Freight, environment, modern anti-slavery legislation and related responsibilities, ethical business practices and more have an economic cost and social impact on Australia.
“Governments at all levels should include these factors into their entire procurement formulas and ultimate reporting regardless of whether adopting a print management or direct commercial print model,” said Northwood.
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