A word of caution. You’d do well to consider that some commercial majors have kept away. We spoke to a number of the most go-ahead sheetfed and digital operations who all said they were keeping their eye firmly on core strengths. John Wanless, managing director of Bambra Press in Melbourne, says the business is steering clear. SOS Print & Media in Sydney runs Xeikon digital press as well as the country’s first Kodak Prosper inkjet press, but director Michael Schulz says he is not interested in larger formats, except for proofing. Ray Keen, managing director of Melbourne-based Printgraphics says the company buys in its digital print.
But the figures look tempting. Out-of-home advertising leaped a fifth from 2010 on the previous year. When you examine what wide-format print has done for the signwriting industry, you might find yourself marvelling.
Wide-format leaders
Industry flagbearers include Melbourne’s Magnify Media. Its installation of an HP Scitex Turbojet 8500 follows on the heels of a second HP Scitex FB7500. In fact, Magnify Media is the only company in Asia Pacific with two of these top-end machines, and managing director John Duplock is an avowed TurboJet fan. In January, the company also installed an HP Scitex FB700 and FB500. You don’t go on that kind of shopping spree without the promise of work to back it up.
Melbourne-based Omnigraphics, recently reinforced its HP fleet with an FB7500, says managing director Nathan Sable. The company specialises in billboards, mesh, banners, street furniture, poster work, flatbed applications of rigid substrates, floor graphics, light-boxes, retail and point-of-sale (POS) applications.
But you don’t need to be a wide-format high-flyer from day one. Take a company like Signkiosk, run by third-generation signwriters Brett and Greg Boland, steeped in a family business tradition of hand-and-brush work. Nowadays the Bolands use new-wave solvent ink technology to produce point-of-sale signage for a slate of retail, service and B2B clients. Think names like Civic Video, Iris Group, Rent-A-Space, General Pants, Turnbull Ossher Design and Diageo.
The Marrickville, NSW company was looking to mothball its computerised vinyl cutting and pinpointed Epson’s Pro GS6000 solvent-ink printer as a solution.
“It doesn’t matter what print a client wants, we know this printer is the best solution. The durability required for external signage is there. The high quality for signage and exhibition prints is there. And the colour to meet virtually any corporate branding specifications is almost guaranteed,” says Brett Boland.
Instead of hundreds of different vinyl rolls, Signkiosk works with a handful of laminate, gloss, lustre and satin self-adhesive vinyl rolls. He says: “Civic makes use of very vibrant colours, including reds, yellows, blues and even some purple. The challenge in using the vinyl cutter for those types of jobs is that each colour has to be cut, laminated and applied individu-ally. Having the Pro GS6000 means we’re now able to create signage – anything from in-store and window right through to vehicle wraps – in a single process.”
SmartPrint Group in Queensland approached wide-format from a different angle. The 15-year-old Toowoomba business has eclectic origins. It credentials include graphic design, and it got a taste for commercial litho and screen through extensive outsourcing to trade printers. But when the chance arose to buy out one of its screen print suppliers, managing director Garry Donpon took the plunge, seeding a new in-house skills base.
As screen started making way for inkjet, his sights turned to new kit, spurred on by rising outsourcing costs for digital, the labour-intensive nature of screen – think contour-cutting RubyLith to produce a film positive – and a drop in margins on brokering offset work.
SmartPrint now has a pair of Epsons on its production floor. A 44-inch Pro 9880 and a 64-inch GS6000 are used for POS, stickers, garments, magnets and vinyl notebook and binder covers. SmartPrint still offers its own design and web creation too, giving customers a single address for their communications needs.
The firm now has 14 staff, relaunching from a purpose-built premises two years ago as the SmartPrint Group, with the Epson printers as the basis of a new print and film production environment.
Donpon was recently successful in winning display tenders for local councils. The GS6000 is ideal for four-metre double-sided exterior banners. That’s no longer in the ‘screen print-exclusive’ domain, but is now the kind of work that can be pulled in by any smart thinking commercial provider.
Changing direction
Sean Kelly joined Melbourne trade bureau Colourtech in 2004. He already had experience in transiting another business out of pre-press and into digital print. The years were numbered for standalone pre-press houses; signage, displays and installs seemed a natural route to take.
“It was an easy transition with the colour background already at the company. People understood PMS matching and four-colour process, so instead of going to an imagesetter we went direct to print.
“It was far easier for us than for a signwriting business that had to learn all about Macs and pre-press from scratch,” says Kelly.
The greatest learning curve was the sheer range of substrates – 3D signage, boards and plastics. Three years ago, Colourtech boosted its production with a Durst Rho 600 flatbed/roll hybrid from Photo Electronic Services, capable of printing 1.6m continuous. The company prints signage for all of Centrelink’s offices nationally, POS signage for Puma stores, banners, and vehicle wraps.
The 11-staff Collingwood business also runs barcode optical recognition cutters and lamination equipment, and is considering a second flatbed.
Seven years ago, a solvent printer and lamination gear cost around $150,000. Kelly estimates it would cost at least $500,000 to kit up for wide-format today. So he’s glad Colourtech made its move when it did. From a personal perspective, he says it’s a lot more satisfying creating finished pieces than running out film for projects that others print.
Print by designers
Valley Edge Design Centre, a 21-year-old Brisbane firm based in Fortitude Valley, is a client of reseller Australian Visual Solutions (AVS). Valley Edge managing director Rocky Cassaniti says the business is managed by designers, and print and signage technicians “who value profes-sional accuracy in image and branding”.
The firm’s core is graphic design, but it has a strong print component. Five- and two-colour Heidelberg Speed-masters handle production sheetfed. A Canon ImagePress 6000 prints digital colour, and the sign department offers high-quality digital and vinyl signage production. Roland DG kit, including a VersaCamm V6 640 eco-solvent printer bought through AVS, use Eco Sol Max inks for producing pull-up and vinyl banners, architectural and directional signage, A-frames, posters, lightboxes, vehicle graphics – all with minimal impact on the environment.
Cassaniti says the company’s USP is its graphic design heritage. This background helps with quality consistency for the printing it does for the likes of Contiki and Queensland Police Credit Union, giving it the edge over conventional downstream printers. “Our designers liaise with our print people and with signwriter managers all the way through,” he says. Theo Prosenica of PMS Lithography in Melbourne’s Thomastown was keen to move more heavily into large-format offset, such as packaging, posters, and retail POS to the trade. But cost and makeready times were becoming an issue, so he began exploring digital alternatives. He ultimately invested in an Océ Arizona 350GT digital flatbed, which can print on rigid media up to 1.25×2.5m in size and 48mm thick. With a rollfed option, users can print on flexible media up to 2.2m wide. For Prosenica, the digital option had to match the quality of his offset work, and he says his Arizona has fit the bill admirably. In fact, it moved ahead of budgeted projections in its first month.
Peter Eddy, senior product manager at distributor DES, reports the sale of an EFI Vutek GS3200 plus Media Master, a fully automated material handling system. The customer was a traditional offset print business that declined to be named, but Eddy says it was looking for a way to expand its wide-format profile by printing POS work directly onto substrates.
Some printers have voiced concerns about whether wide format is environmentally friendly enough. Certainly, traditional solvent inks are making way for the new range of eco-solvent products, and corporates are driving much of the change to a ‘greener’ approach. DES stocks the EFI Vutek inks range in GS, QS and QSr formulations.
Inkjet media supplier Starleaton has been tracking the changes. “We are finding that more and more Starleaton customers are requesting environmentally friendly signage and display solutions,” says Gary Smith, director of Starleaton Digital Solutions.
“Their own customers are demanding this as part of their environmental policies. While Starleaton does supply wide-format equipment from HP, Epson, Canon and Screen, it is
with the consumables that the biggest environmental benefits can be achieved.”
Wide-format inks
Solvent for point-of-sale and outdoor applications.
UV-cured for industrial applications
Aqueous water-based, for display, photographic – and for proof work
Laser Also known as electro-photo-graphic or xerographic printing, pioneered by Xerox Dye-sublimation Declining in the larger formats due to file-resolution limitations
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