‘Hard work’ helps double profits at SOS Print & Media

The 115-staff Sydney print company generated $31.3m in revenues in the 12 months to 30 June 2011.

Post-tax profits were up to $520,000, a 134% rise year-on-year from the $222,000 profit it turned last year, especially heartening when measured against a $132,000 loss in 2008/09.

Director Michael Schulz said: “It is all hard work. The market is not easy.”

He said that despite the number of Sydney commercial printers that have collapsed over the past two years, overcapacity was still a problem.

“You always think when other printers go there is more for all [but] there’s no easy way just because all these other printers have gone. It is hard work. It is every single client you have to take care of,” said Schulz.

SOS is in the midst of consolidating its digital fleet into a single site not far from its headquarters in Alexandria, Sydney.

The digital hub will comprise a menagerie of makes and models, including the country’s only B&W Kodak Prosper inkjet web press, a Ricoh Pro C900, a Xeikon 5000, a pair of Océ VarioPrint 6250 printers and even Kodak Digimasters.

Schulz said the next step would be another high-volume inkjet press to offer some back-up, with SOS seeing an increasing number of inkjet jobs over “10 million clicks per week”.

“There will have to be another roll-fed inkjet device. There has to be another high-production machine because the change in productivity from the toner machines to the inkjet is just so massive that you can’t just rely on one machine.”

SOS was the first in Australia to invest in high-volume web-fed inkjet, but Schulz said the sector had quickly become very competitive.

Rivalry in book printing comes from the HP inkjet web presses at Griffin Press and McPhersons Print Group, while there is also competition from the colour machines at general commercial printers Blue Star and On Demand Printing in Melbourne, which recently invested in the country’s first Océ ColorStream.

However, Schulz said the growing inkjet capacity in Australia could serve to win work currently being sent offshore, particularly book work.

“Everything colour is printed offshore and hopefully that will change. We have explored that with toner so we know that will be more possible.”

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