An industry stalwart who runs a lot of A3 printing fielded this question from ProPrint recently: “Is there life yet in the old A3 offset format?”

“Maybe not in the old A3 offset,” he retorted, “but certainly in the new A3 offset.” He then explained what he meant by this A3 litho redux – along the way detailing his sophisticated logistical operation, which embraces every process from order desk to despatch for his A3/B3 sheetfed operation. The printing itself is done on two waterless UV presses.

The question of “Whither A3 offset?” carries some resonance in the Australian industry. Consider that small offset was once regarded as a staple revenue raiser, typically for family businesses that gave their owners a lifestyle and held potential for the next generation to take over.

But changing times have conspired to wipe out that scenario, with a respected industry analyst noting that only two A3 litho presses were sold during the whole of 2013, and Heidelberg announcing the end of production for its iconic GTO stable. The offset giant though has responded to the digital challenge with its Anicolor A3, and now B2, presses, which offer superfast turnaround times, a waste sheet count now at just 20 sheets, and of course offset quality.

Electronic delivery is steadily increasing its encroachment on flyers, catalogues, books, stationery and direct marketing material, once the lifeblood of the ‘Mum-and-Dad-plus’ print business. Meanwhile, larger-scale businesses have honed in on these reduced orders in the 52cm format by gang printing in A2/B2, aided by savvy impositioning and enviable logistics to push the product out to its end-market at the speed of light.

With a 50 per cent decline in the number of Australian A3 offset printers since the new century, the choice is either to sell up or to find new ways to meet customer expectations. Assuming you want to hang in there, the question is, how to stay competitive?

For some time now, a key solution to printing the smaller commercial stuff has been transferring A3 work to digital. Firstly, it enables far shorter runs and quicker turnarounds, and secondly, it introduces the potential of variable data printing.

With output quality now virtually on a par with offset, all but the most high-end projects – think coffee table books and prestige car or real estate brochures – are suitable for printing digitally.

Digital production printing offers several attractions. With its instant printing, no makeready time, no plates, low skill levels, ability to integrate with web to print systems, inline finishing, small footprint and crucially low capex, digital printing offers small print businesses the means to meet the demands of the rapidly growing short run, and slowly growing variable data markets.

And at the entry level end of digital printing, the choice of engines is growing, as is their capability level. From their origins as souped up photocopiers, the new generation of basic commercial digital printers offer printers decent quality, reliability and consistency of print. Typical of those making the move is Illawarra offset firm Coastline Printing which earlier this year, installed a new Konica Minolta bizhub Press C6000.

Coastline director Ross Freestone says the 30-year-old printer could not compete with digital operations because it found offset is not as cost effective for short run jobs. “We had to keep up with modern printing trends, clients didn’t want to pay a lot for say 200 cards,” he says. “The industry is changing so much and we needed to go with that change to bring that work back and chase more business.”

Freestone says after seeing the digital press reduce his turnaround time on short run jobs up to 2000 units to a third of what it had been on offset and double cost efficiency, there was no way he was going to part with it. He says,“It’s exactly what we wanted. The colour quality is exceptional and compares well to offset 

quality for half the cost, which we were able to pass on to our clients,” he says. “It’s ideal for the many jobs we have printing 200 programs or so.”

The digital alternative

What has become the big four of cost effective high quality colour digital presses have all had a busy autumn, launching new printers all designed to offer the A3 printer a quick, high quality, low cost, easy to operate machine, with inline finishing.

In April, Konica Minolta introduced a new family of digital presses, the bizhub Press C1060 and bizhub Press C1070, aimed at light to mid-end digital printing. The presses offer SRA3 capability, speeds from 60 to 70 images per minute, offset-like quality and are competitively priced, says David Procter, general manager, production printing at Konica Minolta Australia.

Ricoh Australia recently launched the Ricoh Pro C5110S Series, a range of speedy colour light-production devices that offer entry level pricing. Rated speed is up to 80ppm, and the system comes with well featured media-handling and inline finishing options, just like the Ricoh Pro C751 and Pro C901 series, but with lower duty cycles and a smaller footprint. And the new Pro C5100 series also offers varying levels of controllers, allowing customers to choose the most suitable options to address their workflow and productivity requirements, according to Mark Katrakis, national business development manager, production.

For its entry level range, Fuji Xerox offers the Color 560/570 printer, the Color C75/J75 presses and now the new Versant 2100 Press with its 100ppm output speed. In black and white, there is the D Series range, including the D95, D110, D125 and D136 copier/printers.

Canon, which launched the original colour digital press back in the eighties with its CLC range, has just launched its new C800 series, which is newly designed to fit straight into the A3 market offering strong ROI.

How difficult is it to transition your A3 work from offset to digital? Advice on this from David Procter at Konica Minolta: “A good operator will make all of the difference. Anyone can push a green button, but there is so much more you can get out of a digital press. Add to this a salesperson who can sell digital and you are on your way.”

Mark Katrakis at Ricoh says that while digital print does imply a modicum of simplicity, it also requires basic skills to make it a success. The ability to manage inputs is of vital importance to producing quality output. “We have all heard the saying ‘garbage in, garbage out,’ and this applies to digital print. Understanding the most appropriate configuration and the best use of automation can increase business efficiency by up to 40 per cent,” he says.

Henryk Krazweski at Canon says, “Transitioning from offset to digital can be a real eye opener for printers. They suddenly discover that the digital print solution is so quick and easy that they have far more time to spend with their customers. There is no makeready, you can go from hitting file, print on the computer to seeing folded stitched product coming off the line. For anyone that can use a computer, and I guess that is most printers, making the move to digital is simple and straightforward.”

Stephen Ball, industry marketing manager at Fuji Xerox Australia, says in transiting from offset to digital in the smaller formats, the focus should be on identifying what applications should make the journey – and what new value can be delivered to stakeholders. He says, “From a technology perspective, some of the decisions that need to be made include: what are the projected monthly print volumes? What are the primary sizes, weights and kinds of papers you run? What level of productivity is required? What are the space limitations? What type of finishing is required? What type of jobs and applications are run? What is the job mix?

“From a business perspective, there are a number of things that should be taken into consideration as well, from employee training to marketing new capabilities.”

Which brings us to colour management. David Procter of Konica Minolta estimates that ‘less than 10 per cent’ of digital press operators are profiling each job to a specific stock. He says, “It is about how much time you want to put in to get the result. A lot of printers would be surprised how close digital can get, even on long runs using current technologies.”

Says Mark Katrakis: “Many of Ricoh’s customers use the standard Fiery Controller which places a comprehensive range of colour management tools in the hands of the users. At a more advanced level, Ricoh can also provide colour profiler software to help emulate offset. Quality is subjective, so in some cases it sits with the customer’s expectations as to what is acceptable. That said, Ricoh’s current production range prints at 4800dpi producing quality which is hard to fault.”

Stephen Ball of Fuji Xerox says colour management tools “are just as applicable on smaller digital devices as in large and the need for colour accuracy is usually dictated by the application and result desired by the customer. Colour management software for smaller devices is available both in an on-premise and Cloud format and is priced according to the lower yields expected from smaller devices when compared to larger production-type devices.”

Henryk Kraszewski at Canon says, “Offset printers moving into digital will find that colour management is a whole lot easier, basically because the printer and rip will do it for you. There is no ink and water balance to manage, so there is no need to spend time managing the colour on the printer, again leaving more time to be with customers.” 

 Affordable, controlled growth

Ten years ago Adelaide businessman Vern Richter bought a small printing company in Adelaide’s CBD with an Itek press and a couple of black-and-white and colour Canons. Today, after Richter had acquired two companies and integrated them with his own, CentrePrint Printing Adelaide sits on 400sqm premises at Keswick, five minutes from the city, serving a mix of both South Australian and national customers.

Richter reports a fivefold growth in turnover in the independent family business, run by himself and his wife Margaret. He describes that curve as “affordable, controlled growth,” in contrast to competitors who buy the kit, then slash margins to maintain capacity. Even so, he believes he is only making 10 per cent of the margin on colour printing he was making ten years ago.

CentrePrint’s jobs come in mainly by referral and Richter does not see value in installing an online portal. He deliberately avoids pitching for the low margin stuff, declaring he is not interested in work “that we can win for a dollar, then lose for a dollar.”

CentrePrint hosts a $40,000 dedicated digital room for a recently purchased Ricoh 750 and an Océ 2110 mono press (it also runs two GTOs). Richter estimates that five years ago his offset to digital to outsource ratio for cutsheet was roughly 33 to 33 to 33 per cent. Today, 50 per cent of work is performed digitally, most of it on the 750, with the remainder split evenly between the GTOs and trade offset. Space on A3 and A2 presses is to be had cheaply, and he says he does not envy the task facing the offset print fraternity in Adelaide.

As for digital, he tells ProPrint: “If there is a month that I am not printing at least half my work digitally, I know I am not making the required profit on the business. Customers like the work coming off the Ricoh. We even had one customer who preferred the quality of the digital output to offset – they liked the crispness of the toner.”

In many ways it is the old paradigm repeated – the digital press can generate those 500 to 1,000 brochures, or 250 to 500 business cards, or the local GPs’ promotional scratchpads, all done and dusted, while the GTOs are still cranking out makeready, so the Heidelbergs are kept for longer-haul jobs. And for the occasional variable data job, the Ricoh 750 is the choice.

Richter, aged 60, estimates that if he stays in the business for another ten years, there is a fair chance he will still be selling it with the GTOs on the floor, but what ratio of work will be coming off them is anybody’s guess, and jobs are still quoted for both technologies, he says. But for the long term, the writing seems to be on the wall for small offset.

A firm believer in colour management, Richter says the Ricoh 750 is colour calibrated at least twice a month to the Fiery rip. At the postpress end of the printer, his only wish is for a small, low-budget three-knife trimmer as an alternative to the 750’s sizeable bookletmaker that comes as an option on the machine.

Define your service offering

Sydney’s On Demand Print was founded a quarter of a century ago by Chris Pilz as an adjunct to his real estate photography business, printing property brochures in offset, but when digital was introduced the company became one of the earliest commercial digital print outfits in Australia.

Today it operates from Cromer, on the northern beaches, and has a staff of around 25. Most jobs come in via email, and while there is an online portal, it is not a major in-channel. For its commercial work, which constitutes some 40 per cent of the company’s turnover, it runs a mix of A3/B3 offset and digital printing. In cutsheet, Pilz estimates a 50-50 split between A3 offset and digital.

If A3 offset printing is on life support, nobody has stopped to let Pilz know, he says. And from the efficiencies on his production floor, he greets that assertion with a wry smile.

Where once there was a Heidelberg GTO-DI, there’s now a five-colour Speedmaster SM52, with processless Fuji thermal plates from a Suprasetter. On the digital side, an HP Indigo 7500 has replaced an Indigo 5000, handling runs in the 500 to 1,000 space.

But the other 60 per cent of company turnover is in the fast growing large format POS sector, with printing on an HP Latex LX850, two Océ Arizona 350s and a 3.5m Virtu RS35 UV printer.

Of course, Pilz, On Demand’s managing director, is all too aware of A3 offset’s precarious state in the Australian print industry at large, at the receiving end of the domino effect that has seen the spoils go to players of scale who gang-print in the larger formats. “Offset printing has contracted from the top down, with A1 print cannibalising A2, and A2 cannibalising A3,” he says.

Yet Pilz sees plenty of energy left in A3 offset, provided there is a staple, core clientele. At On Demand, that remains the real estate sector. “In small offset it is harder to find jobs that suit; harder than it used to be, but our real estate work supports us and we remain competitive,” he tells ProPrint.

On Demand’s strategy for A3 print is to standardise workflow, present customers with a specific set of options, and always to sell to its machines and not take on jobs that do not fit that window.

Proofs are matched to the Speedmaster but a PDF workflow means client approval of proofs is not essential, which cuts out costly delays. For both its Speedmaster and Indigo, colour output is regularly calibrated but not to ISO, and Pilz says his customers are basically after “speed to market, not deadly accuracy. They are asking us for timely processing of their work in pleasing colour.”

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