Ask what makes a good businessperson in print, and a queue of people would line up to assure you that a manager needs A, a printing background and B, a close connection to the industry. Sometimes this claim is correct. But there are exceptions to the rule, as evidenced by a company run by two men – one with a background in motor parts, the other in whitegoods – who emigrated to Australia from Kenya in 1993, and went on to establish one of Perth’s largest, most awarded printers.
Quality Press, situated south of Perth’s CBD, is one of the city’s largest printing outfits. The 70-staff company is a regular at the state PICA awards and offers an end-to-end range of services, including sheetfed and continuous-feed offset, as well as digital printing and nearly the entire gamut of finishing processes; it only sends out die-cutting, foiling and UV varnishing.
The founders emigrated to Australia separately under business migrant visas, the condition of which was that they had invest in a local company. They arrived on our shores with only the vaguest plans about which industry to join. The fact that a pair of non-printers not only joined the printing industry but established a thrived business might seem surprising. But meeting the directors and seeing the diverse range of skills in their management team, it all starts to add up.
New Australians
Atish Shah and Ramesh Patel did not know each other before entering Australia in early 1995. The visa meant they became permanent residents the moment they stepped onto these shores, on the proviso that they buy into a business.
Shah and Patel met in Perth, and together they founded Quality Press. Today, Shah is the managing director, while Patel is “semi-retired”, though still an active part of the business.
The two directors’ Indian heritage makes them somewhat unusual among print shop bosses in Australia. If that is true today, it was even more remarkable when they founded the firm nearly 20 years ago.
“We were the first lot who came over in 1995 as business migrants,” says Patel.
Shah says there might have been a few Indian professionals, such as restaurateurs, but at the time, Indians were thin on the ground in the Western Australian capital. Times have changed.
“There were five Indian restaurants in 1993. Now there are probably 300 or 400. You can see the massive jump just in the restaurant trade,” says Shah.
The Indian connection at Quality Press continues through Shah and Patel’s family members, who occupy key management roles in the business.
Atish’s youngest brother, Manesh Shah, is a mechanical engineer and looks after production at Quality Press. The middle brother, Amit, brings a legal background. They both graduated from the University of Western Australia. Ramesh’s son, Nirev Patel, has an IT background.
The two founders and their families remain active members of the Indian community in Perth. More than that, they align themselves with the natives of their home state of Gujarat. “There were 200 Guajaratis [in Perth] in 1993; now there are more than 5,000,” says Shah.
Rounding off the management team is a man who seems the polar opposite of the softly spoken Shahs and Patels. Graeme Young is Quality’s New Zealand-born general manager. If his loud voice and somewhat brash humour seems at odds with the rest of the team, it is also clearly an essential part of the company’s recipe for success: the outspoken Kiwi has been general manager throughout Shah and Patel’s 16 years of ownership. His printing know-how was especially pivotal in the early days.
“Graeme can jump into any department and get going. And of course he is our GM so he controls employees and we always tap into his knowledge and experience,” says Patel.
Multicultural mix
All of this makes for an interesting cultural mix, and one that is not just limited to the Shahs and Patels. Apart from the Indian-Kenya-Kiwi management mix, there are around 17 nationalities represented among the workforce, including Brits, Swiss, Taiwanese, South Africans, Croatians
and, of course, Australians.
Young says: “You wouldn’t find a print company of this size anywhere in Australia with this number of diverse backgrounds. But just because we have Indian management and directors, it doesn’t mean we employ Indians for the sake of it.
“I have advertised for local printers and finishers in Australia and New Zealand and I can’t get them. So I do a 457 [Temporary Business Long Stay visa] to bring someone out from India. Some of those people who qualified in India are better trained than locals. And the attitude is like a breathe of fresh air,” adds Young.
Amit Shah jokes: “We had to teach some of them not to call us ‘sir’ any more.”
Speaking to the management team and touring the plant, one common theme arises – harmony. It is a concept that should be familiar to anyone who knows anything about India, where 1.2 billion people of diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds share a sub-continent 3.2 million square kilometres, less than half the size of Australia.
“No one in this company ever goes around shouting and screaming or abusing anyone. It is always in harmony, with clear communication and encouraging and positive motivation,” says Young.
Harmony at work
There is a strong sense of that harmony around the boardroom table. The high regard with which they hold each other is abundantly clear. When the directors start to describe one another, it becomes a back-and-forth of lavish compliment and modest deflection.
Each director praises the other’s business skills. “50% of the hotels in the US are owned by Patels,” says Atish Shah.
Ramesh Patel counters: “The Shah community has the best business acumen.”
Shah praises Patel: “We really appreciate his years of knowledge and experience of business”; Ramesh assures his was “just a side role”.
But the positive outlook and ethnic mix at Quality Press has not been without its hiccups. Young says he has dismissed a number of people for racial discrimination, which is specifically banned in the company’s handbook.
You get the impression that if only one person did raise his voice, it might be Young. He is a good-natured but commanding presence at the company. The Kiwi brings a wealth of industry experience, having done a printing apprenticeship and worked his way up to production management and supervisory positions.
Success from failure
Young’s involvement with Quality Press actually pre-dates Shah and Patel’s. He had worked for the business under the former owner, Frank Kellett, but left two years prior to the company’s fall into administration in 1995.
It was around this time that Patel and Shah saw a newspaper advertisement for Quality Press. They had know they wanted to invest in a business – in fact, had to invest, as per the conditions of their visa – but they didn’t set out to join the printing industry. It had taken two years before the right opportunity presented itself.
“We had only one objective in mind, to settle in Australia and it was our pride that whatever we did had to be a success,” says Patel.
Soon after purchasing the business from the administrators, Patel contacted Young and urged him to re-join the company under its new management. Young says he was sceptical at first, not only because he had seen the former company fall by the wayside, but also, understandably, cautious about the idea of going to work for two guys whose entire understanding of the industry could be printed on a single sheet of paper (if they’d known how to actually print it).
“It was challenge because everything was new for us. The market was new. The politics were new. The trends were new. The economics of the printing industry were new. The technology was new. The employees’ attitude was new,” says Patel.
What followed was a baptism of fire for the new owners, who leant heavily on Young’s printing knowledge to inform their own. Patel would talk to him for hours every day about the intricacies of printing. “I thought, I’m getting sucked dry here,” says Young.
But the learning stuck, he adds. “Of all the employers I have worked for in Australia or New Zealand, not many business people have been able to absorb new ideas like Atish and Ramesh. They are very receptive and quickly understood the fundamentals of needing modern equipment to go forward. Any signs of requirements for production, they would listen, accept new ideas and take them on-board.”
Early adopters
A forward-thinking attitude to technology has been a tenet of Quality Press since the beginning. In 2000, the firm installed an Agfa violet platesetter, becoming one of the first printers in Perth to opt for in-house computer-to-plate. The company was also an early adopter of the Kodak Nexpress platform, says Young.
Quality Press later made a switch to thermal CTP with a Kodak Magnus platesetter and Prinergy workflow at the same time as installing an A1-format 10-colour Komori Lithrone; the firm had needed a more productive platesetter to feed the hungry long perfector.
More recently, Quality Press was one of the first commercial printers to install Kodak S5 inkjet overprinting heads, which have been fitted to its continuous-feed line to add variable-data capabilities. This side of the business – forms printing – was only added in 2010, as part of Quality’s biggest milestone in recent memory.
If the story of Quality Press’ early days was one of Shah and Patel learning the ropes of a new sector and steadily developing one of Perth’s foremost printers, its recent history is one of explosive growth driven by acquisition. Two years ago, Quality acquired defunct outfit Pacific Printing. Not only did the acquisition take the company into the business forms sector, it also brought with it Pacific’s newer, B2-format sheetfed press and a chance to relocate to a larger factory.
But the move wasn’t easy. The buyout came in the throes of the GFC and the downturn proved to be both a spur and a brake for the acquisition. On the one hand, real estate values had fallen, creating a sense of opportunity for Quality Press. But on the other, the difficult trading conditions that pushed Pacific Printing over the edge were affecting the entire market. Even banks in mining-rich Perth were tightening the purse strings.
“We were in the market to replace our old four-colour press and we saw this as an opportunity to come in and acquire the half-size press and real estate,” says Shah.
“The biggest challenge we faced at that point in time was to convince the bank to finance us, because none of the banks were lending. There were liquidity problems at the banks. But we managed to convince the bank this was a good business proposition for us and they were good enough to finance the purchase of the business.”
Airport run
It took the company around nine months to relocate from its 2,200m2 plant in the suburb of Osborne Park to Pacific’s 3,600m2 premises in Welshpool, a prime industrial location just off the highway and stone’s throw from Perth Airport. All the workers were retained, and the company’s headcount rose from 57 to a total of 70. The Pacific Printing Co badge still sits within the company foyer, but over time it will be phased out and existing customers will be served under the Quality Press umbrella brand.
Further to the larger production space, the directors of Quality Press have sought a return on investment from the real estate in another way. When ProPrint visits, they are nearing completion of a two more buildings. One will be used as a paper store while the other building will be leased out to a third-party. Quality Press can also use it for further growth down the track.
Even the roof of the building is being put to work – as the home for a massive spread of solar cells. This adds to a number of impressive environmental achievements. Amit Shah drives Quality’s green aims, which includes Level 3 certification to the Green Stamp badge, run by Printing Industries. The company is now on its way toward ISO 14001. It recycles 95% of its water from platemaking and is planning a switch to processless.
But easily the most impressive achievement is in solar. The company’s renewable energy targets are staggering. The number of photovoltaic cells on the roof of the building is so immense that Quality Press claims it is the first company in Australia to have a privately funded solar energy harvesting station that exceeds 130 kilowatts using rooftop solar photovoltaic panels. The system generates nearly 230,000 kW hours per year, amounting to $68,000 in electricity savings.
This is the first phase of a three-part strategy to increase energy rating capability to 300 kW, which would be 80% of the plant’s energy needs.
In fact, it was such a significant energy output that utilities body Western Power did not know how to cope. “They didn’t have a policy and didn’t know how to deal with the situation,” says Patel.
Amit Shah explains: “All solar installations across Australia have to be fed into the grid. You can’t have your own solar feeding directly into your own power. There are various reasons, like in a state of emergency, they might want everyone to switch their power off.”
Quality Press has secured a conditional approval from Western Power and expects to “flick the switch” in the near future, says Young.
“We are not just being green and talking about it; we are doing something. We don’t want to just be green to win green printing, we are doing it for the sake of saving money, the carbon tax and becoming more efficient. If we also give back to the planet, so be it,” adds Young.
The first word that springs to mind is harmony.
Factfile
Presses: 10-colour Komori Lithrone perfector, five-colour plus coater Komori Lithrone, eight-colour Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 perfector, Miyakoshi continuous-feed press
Staff: 70
Owners: Ramesh Patel and Atish Shah
Location: Welshpool, Perth
Established: 1995
Business briefing
· Ramesh Patel and Atish Shah came separately to Australia from Kenya in 1995.
· Neither had a printing background: Shah came from whitegoods, Patel was in motor parts.
· A condition of their visa was they had to invest in a business. In 1995, the saw an advertisement for Quality Press, which had gone into administration.
· They quickly hired Graeme Young as general manager, who brought a long industry history and printing credentials.
· Shah’s two brothers and Patel’s son are key members of the team. The workforce is very multicultural, with around 17 nationalities represented across the company.
· In 2010, Quality Press bought the premises and equipment of Pacific Printing Co from the administrator.
· The acquisition gave the company a new, larger site and an entry into the business forms market.
· The company has expanded the site to three buildings.
· The company has ambitious environmental aims, and is on track to become the first company in Australia to have a privately funded solar energy harvesting station that exceeds 130 kilowatts.
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter