Printers in Canberra are bracing for budget pain as the Federal Government prepares to slash spending across the board in next week’s budget, though they expect the demise of Focus Press to soften the impact, both from the capacity taken out and the ending of the low prices Focus was charging.

All government spending is in the crosshairs of Abbott’s razor gang – following successive governments already having pledged to cut thousands of pages of printed reports to reduce ‘waste’ – and the potential for numerous abolished government agencies and initiatives in the coming budget looks to accelerate the trend of a decreasing print requirement.

New Millennium Print director Mark Delmenico, whose business is 70 per cent government work, says he has noticed a definite trend towards declining print volumes and expects even more cuts from the new budget.

“They still have to do some printing but since everything else is going to be cut you’d be silly to think they wouldn’t cut printing costs as well. It’s been going that way for a while,” he says.

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Delmenico says less work always leads to fiercer price wars as printers scramble to pick up what work is left. He says Focus Press was a serial belligerent in this regard and its collapse may free up work for the rest of the market.

“I was being priced out of jobs I’d had for over five years by Focus Press and it was the same with many other printers, so we will have more opportunity now to offset the reduced work,” he says.

Impress Printers director Terry Ward says his business isn’t as reliant on government work, but still expects to take a hit come budget time.

“I have noticed smaller volumes in the past few years. I don’t want to get into a panic, but I think things will get tougher for everyone – there’s been quite a few printers around here that have gone down,” he says.

Ward is also concerned that as the government work dries up, printers needing to fill their presses will start poaching his private sector clients.

He too thinks Focus Press’ demise will help soften the blow, but thinks that as Shergill’s Focus Print Group will maintain a sales presence in Canberra it will be able to maintain most of its long run offset work.

“It will be better for us smaller printers because the government will need short run work done in Canberra rather than out in Sydney,” he says.

“The bigger companies will also struggle more because they have such large presses to keep at capacity with less work around.

“I think we have to take it as it comes, consolidate our equipment, keep staff to a minimum and stay lean and mean. Then we can try to keep our heads above water.”

[Related: More Canberra news]

Print is increasingly taking a back seat to digital and other media in government campaign advertising, as Finance Department reports show declining spending for press and magazines and soaring digital investment.

The government spent $17.5m in press advertising and $3.7m in magazine advertising in the 2013 financial year, representing 12.6 and 2.7 per cent of the total $138.9m spend – down from 16.8 and 2.7 per cent in 2012 and 20.4 and 5.4 per cent in 2011. Out of home dropped by 20 per cent from $5.1m in 2012 to $4m in 2013.

In contrast, digital spending rocketed to $29.1m at 21 per cent, beating press for the first time. It was up from 14.7 per cent in 2012 and 13.9 per cent in 2011.

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