Sydney based not-for-profit mailing house Beehive Industries is expanding into printing, having been given an ex lease printer and scanner among other items from Konica Minolta.

Konica Minolta has given the enterprise a bizhub 654 including booklet finishing technology along with sourcing a Kodak i4600 scanner with associated training from its partner, ACA Pacific. Konica Minolta also donated computer equipment, furniture and shelving units.

Beehive was able to launch its programme Beehive2Work, where it has expanded its commercial services by adding print to its offerings, and providing employment opportunities for the people it supports. Previously, Beehive used local print shops to print out flysheets, letterheads and other documents.

Brendan Lonergan, CEO of Beehive Industries, says, “Faced with such a substantial loss in recurrent funding, there are generally two options: cut services and support fewer people in need; or expand revenues to continue to support as many people as possible. Obviously, Beehive preferred to expand revenues.

“We are looking after more than 200 seniors, people with disabilities or long-term unemployed. The bulk of the money for the services we provide comes from running the commercial business.

“At a supply chain sustainability meeting at the Konica Minolta office, I happened to be introduced to Dr David Cooke and I explained about Beehive and what we do. Representatives came over to Beehive and they toured the factory. They asked how they could help and I said we are looking to get into digital printing. It was clear that printing and document scanning equipment would be ideal to help us expand our commercial services and improve our margins.

“The equipment was so well refurbished that when the Konica Minolta technician arrived to do the install, he initially thought it was a brand new machine. 

“This smart piece of equipment has delivered two key benefits. First, we can now offer printing services to our customers, which also means we can make a small margin on the printing. Even at a few cents a page, it soon adds up over thousands of pages and helps cover our funding needs. It is also super fast and the print quality is brilliant. We have worked with older machines and this one is about four times faster, which makes us a lot more efficient.

[Related: Konica Minolta hosts innovation panel]

 “The second key benefit is that we are now a lot more useful to our customers and potential customers. We are no longer asking them to do their own printing or incurring costs at a local print shop. Instead, we simply ask them to send us their data files and we can do the rest. That makes us more competitive and a more realistic alternative to traditional print shops. 

“We can print everything from membership stickers to flysheets for magazine mail-outs. This has created new lines of business and more work for the business. That means more cash flow as well as more activity for our people to do.

“We work with a lot of printers already. We would be delighted to talk to more about doing print finishing work. We do not compete with them, because they are on the next level up. We can collate, do assembly, gluing and distribution. We can work alongside printers and down the track, we may have the potential to recommend some of our people as employees.

“For many printers also, they would be making a social impact by partnering with us, which could be more interesting to their customers.

“Assembly can be useful to printers. Our people are trained in it and for example, you could have 15 different government brochures in different languages and they need to be compiled, we can do that.

 “We work with long term unemployed people. A lot of them have not been employed for a long time, they do not have skills that are relevant to the current market. We work with people in the work for the dole programme, they do printing work and assemble inserts, they get the skills and further down the track we can position them out to our contacts and look at them getting a job. We are able to give them the skills, build up their confidence and make them job ready. 

“The other side of that is we also have over 50s and we have been able to place them in employment, even if it is only for two days a week.

“We now have better capabilities in getting them skilled up at a print finishing level. A medium sized print house may have more capacity but they do not have big long tables with people doing hand assembly. So maybe they will have different brochures that need to be sorted into binders and put into shrink wrappers.

[Related: Konica Minolta sends staff to Cambodia]

 “Young people here could definitely fit in a print shop. Down the track, there could be interest in employment placement if that avenue opens up. They are trained, capable and used to production work.”

Beehive supports seniors, long term unemployed and people with disability by enabling them to take part in social activities and volunteering. The company operates a packaging assembly and mail house service on top of providing a leisure centre, learning centre and a commercial kitchen where it provides free meals to its service users.

Lonergan says, “We do not get a lot of funding. The revenue we generate goes directly to feeding and supporting everyone. All of the people we look after are on social welfare and some people we support come from homeless shelters. We also provide social services such as a community bus and all of that is funded out of this work. Helping us generate additional revenue means we can continue to support more people. For the services we are providing, over 80 per cent of it is funded with our commercial work.

“We have about a dozen staff. They work across our kitchen and we have supervisory staff in print and distribution, along with running the community buses.

 “What Konica Minolta has contributed to Beehive Industries is a lot more than just equipment. It’s opened up new opportunities for us and our service users, which is priceless.”

Beehive was established in 1971.

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