2012 will be remembered as a tumultuous year in the printing industry, with much moving and shaking. The heads of PMP and PaperlinX moved out as their share prices plunged down, the Selig brothers moved back into Blue Star by buying the Australian arm of the business and raised hopes upwards, IPMG moved into its new Warwick Farm site with its new 96pp monster web, while $80m of Geon’s debt moved into the hands of a US private equity fund, but then Geon saw the loss of three of its top managers.
Biggest collapse of the year was pulp operation Gunns which sank under the weight of a $904m loss for the year, and with it went 600 jobs and the proposed new pulp mill in Tassie.
Biggest sale was Salmat’s print and mail division BPO which was bought by Fujifilm for the not inconsiderable sum of $375m and rebranded as the Fuji Xerox Document Centre. Not strictly in print but topping the Salmat deal at $500m was the purchase of Kerry Packer’s old ACP Media from debt laden CVC by German giant Bauer Media, with web printers particularly PMP popping the champagne corks.
The three big transpromo printers Salmat, Computershare and Sema all bought high speed inkjet webs. Salmat and Computershare teamed up to take on Australia Post in a battle for digital mail supremacy, Salmat’s new owners Fujifilm then sold its share to Computershare. Sema went through the mill, with an MBO eventuating, and the slimmed down business then started its own digital mailbox service. Australia Post bought a pair of its own high speed printers to compete with its major customers Salmat, Computershare and Sema, in what became a tangled web of partnerships and rivalries.
Catalogues kept the country’s web presses running with IPMG, Franklin, AIW, Webstar and PMP all reaping the benefits. In the book world mummy porn title 50 Shades of Grey was the big success of the year, with Griffin Press producing more than 700,000 copies of the three titles in the series, more than Harry Potter, and giving the blokes of Australia another reason to stay out of the house and down the pub for as long as possible.
Newspaper printing took a huge hit when Fairfax decided to close its Chullora and Tullamarine print sites and print the big metro titles in tabloid version at regional print centres as part of a cost cutting drive which will see 1900 jobs go. News Ltd announced a close to half a billion dollar loss for its Australian newspaper business, but invested in upgrading its presses, although it closed its Cairns print centre.
A host of well known companies went under, the roll call of the more notable names includes Printmode, Kea Print, Bay Print, Universal Business Forms, End Print Solutions, Good Impressions, Hyde Park Press, Brite Solutions, Kudos Colour, Elephant Print Media, Mr Copy NSW, Printergy, Goprint, Sands Group, Print Associates, Heatprint Australia, AP Digital, Minit Print, Print Specifix, ABC Printing, Moorabbin Printing, City Print (NSW), Impress Colour and Queemsland Complete. IPMG closed Craft Print, and two of WA’s biggest printers Lamb and Vanguard merged.
Stoush of the year was between PaperlinX chairman Harry Boon and shareholder Andrew Price, ex-CEO of Stream Solutions, with Price eventually winning out, forcing Boon, and the rest of the board to go, and winning himself a place at the top table as a non-exec.
Other notable feuds included Printing Industries and training provider CLB, this one over the take up of students following the decision by RMIT to close down its printing school. CLB initially won the right to take over the courses and students, while PIAA scrambled to create its own RTO, buying an existing provider, appointing former Kiwi association head Joan Grace to run it, and advising printers that they didn’t need to sign up with CLB, much to the latter’s chagrin.
Running a close third in the public argument stakes were the CEO’s of the two biggest printers in the country; Peter George, newly appointed CEO of PMP and Stephen Anstice, outgoing CEO of IPMG, who took George to task over his comments that print was in decline.
What were they thinking award goes to TMA, a successful ticket print business that bizarrely bid for both PMP and Blue Star, only to be knocked back when asked to provide evidence of its financial wherewithal. TMA went on to open an operation in the Philippines. Also among those looking into Asia was the Opus Group, which fresh from its purchase of McPherson’s opened a Singapore arm
Biggest sheetfed order came from Southern Colour, who plumped for two Heidelberg XL 106 presses, a ten-colour perfector and a six-colour.
Biggest event of the year was drupa with the German mega show attracting a third of a million printers from around the world. Star attraction was Benny Landa and his nano press, which he says combines the best of offset with the best of digital. Whether it will come to fruition remains to be seen, but Landa, who could sell coal to miners, persuaded 200 printers to cough up $10,000 each for ‘a place in the queue’.
The next big event Ipex 2014 got the collywobbles with Heidelberg, HP and Agfa announcing they wouldn’t be there. Then drupa announced it was looking at changing its cycle to every three years, but the suppliers baulked, so it will remain every four. Ipex breathed a major sigh of relief.
On the supply side Kodak went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, manroland came out of potential collapse and into the arms of different buyers for its sheetfed and web divisions, Shinohara was bought out of bankruptcy by Chinese manufacturer Hans Gronji, while EFI continued buying up software developers, including from this part of the world Prism MIS and web-to-print outfit Online Print Solutions.
Locally Heidelberg Australia’s dynamic duo Andy Vels Jensen and Alastair Hadley left the company, long time Komori sales manager Gerard Wintle parted with current agent Ferrostaal, and Livio Barbagallo left Muller Martini after nine years at the helm here.
And sadly industry legend John Crosfield passed away. He was the guy who invented the first electronic page make up system, the first drum scanner, the first enlarging scanner and the first computer controlled scanner, in so doing taking prepress out of the dark ages and laying the foundations for what we have today.
There were plenty of bright spots in the industry; the amalgamation of GASAA into PIAA saw the beginning of a long awaited consolidation of associations, printers were implementing green policies, and web-to-print take up moved forward, as printers looked at Vistaprint’s skyrocketing profits. And in a mark of appreciation for the quality of Aussie print Offset Alpine were judged to have printed the world’s best piece of print with its own Capabilities+ self promotion winning the US Benny best of show award and the Sappi print of the year award.
That’s it for this year, for the best in holiday reading you can order the December issue of the nation’s favourite print magazine Australian Printer by emailing the publisher at brian@i-grafix.com, we’re off to the cricket, we’ll be back next year to do it all again, with some new innovations in the pipeline, so from all at the i-grafix team have a very enjoyable holiday.
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