The company’s factory in the Gold Coast suburb of Biggerra Waters is expected to be ready by October. Business development manager Chris Temov told ProPrint that the company would send two of its offset presses and one of its digital presses to kit out the Queensland facility (pictured).

Temov added the company was confident it was making the right move, despite the fact that few printers are expanding in the current economic conditions.

“There is a financial outlay in setting up over there, but maximising our current equipment was one of the upsides,” he said.

“We did our numbers and figured that we would struggle to expand our East Coast presence from WA, so we just bit the bullet.”

“We have long-term plans of having an East Coast facility that’s bigger than our WA facility,” he added.

CJ King has had an administrative presence on the Gold Coast for the past three years, and has an “even split” of clients between the West and East Coast.

Temov said the company had reviewed “freight costs and turnaround times” and decided it made sense to have roughly 50% of its production capabilities on the East Coast.

It will move will an eight-colour and four-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster, as well as an HP Designjet 5500 digital press, to the Gold Coast. Temov said most of the company’s long-run work would still be done in Perth, while the Gold Coast facility would handle most of the short-run work.

Temov said CJ King was also looking at hiring around eight staff over the next few months to work in the new facility. There are no plans at this stage to relocate any of the company’s existing 30 staff in Perth.

The company is upgrading its digital capabilities by replacing one of the HP 5500s at its Perth site with an HP Indigo 7000.

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