Australian Printer’s 7 over 70 (part 1)

To commemorate AP’s 70th anniversary, we look at the journeys of seven print veterans over the age of 70 and their contributions to the local industry. 

  • Arthur Frost
Lamson Paragon Group of Companies’ Arthur and Rodney Frost (l-r)

Arthur Frost is no stranger in the print industry. At the age of 77, he is still involved in the The Lamson Group as chairman, even though he has semi-retired.

Frost embarked on his career in print after stumbling into it upon chance. After being homeless as a young man, his first job was with the Commonwealth Bank which was not conducive with his ambition to be a licensed bookmaker.

“My father passed on when I was about three years old but he had been a bookmaker as well so that had always stuck in my mind,” he said.

He left the bank and got his bookmakers license, but needed a steady income.

“I applied for a number of roles as a sales representative, across a variety of industries, and that’s when the original business of Lamson Paragon Business Forms Printers offered me the job. That was when I first entered into print – purely by chance,” he said.

“I didn’t know anything about print at that time but I learnt plenty from the business – it was a leader in its field and was quite entrepreneurial and innovative. It was a wonderful learning curve for me initially and I worked with a lot of good people. It laid the foundation in terms of the knowledge and desire that I wanted to get from the print world.”

Frost’s career in print evolved from that point on and he was with the business for 16 years in a number of roles.

“They saw fit to give me a couple of promotions in a few years and that took over my life. I moved from Sydney to Melbourne to take over one of the sales regions, then moved me from Melbourne to Perth to take over state responsibilities, then moved back from Perth to Melbourne into a marketing role,” he said.

Whilst in Perth, a Canadian company, Moore Business Forms, took over Lamson Paragon Business Forms Printers worldwide.

“At that point in time, the Americans got more involved. I was well into the industry. In 1981, I bought a subsidiary off the old Lamson Paragon called Control Systems Tickets because the Americans only wanted to be in Business Forms.”

That is when I, together with my family, moved back from Melbourne to Sydney. Not long after, I resurrected the Lamson Paragon brand,” Frost said.

“At Control Systems, there were many memorable moments but the most memorable was in 1988 – we were the first manufacturer of magnetic stripe tickets in Australia.”

At that time, Korea had put a new transport system in to Seoul for the Olympic Games, which used magnetic stripe tickets.

“After the games, I went to Seoul armed with pre-encoded tickets. They asked if they could send a contingent of people to Australia to view our operation. Our ‘operation’ was in a Nissen Hut in the munitions area of St Mary’s,” Frost said.

“I was extremely embarrassed when I got a call from Canberra asking me if they could join me to welcome the Korean delegation. Imagine a cavalcade of cars going from Mascot to St Mary’s to look inside a Nissen Hut.”

Frost was also involved in bringing EFTPOS to Australia through a public company called EFTECH.

Soon after, when the sales team of the then Moore Paragon company wanted to start their own print broking companies but had few printers that they considered trustworthy to buy off, Frost resurrected the Lamson Paragon brand to service printers, print brokers, mailing houses, and copy shops.

The reborn Lamson Paragon business was registered in 1983 and started trading on 1 August 1990. Starting with one team member, it gradually created a niche in the marketplace as a trade-only supplier.

“A lot of the sales people who had worked with me previously had joined the broking business in print and I became a trusted partner in manufacturing. That catapulted me back into the print environment,” Frost said.

“We grew the business with a bit of luck and a lot of energy. I grew it from nothing as we had very little money. Back when the business started, we only had a processor which turned paper rolls into continuous paper and our first printing press was a two-colour Ryobi pack-to-pack press.

“We also used to share our old Sefton facility as we couldn’t afford a full factory. We took around a third of this factory and shared it with Precision Printers.”

As the business grew, it added on three other business entities through the years – Paper Rolls Australia, Cheque-Mates, and Integrated Office Solutions. The business expanded its footprint to the Philippines, giving Australian businesses the chance to setup teams in Manila.

The group now employs about 160 people and owns over 50 pieces of equipment, which includes 11 web presses, across its seven facilities.

“I don’t have the personality where I could sit down and do nothing. My son, Rodney, runs the business with me now. He does all the strategy and technical stuff while I back the team up with my experience and knowledge,” Frost mentioned.

Frost has also been recognised with multiple awards in the industry for his efforts, including the PIAA (now PVCA) Legend of Print Award in 2016.

But his passion for print isn’t the only one that drives him – his love for the races hasn’t dwindled all these years.

“I have a brood mare, so I breed one race horse a year. My interest in the races went with me through my life,” he added.

  • Keith Ferrel 
Cactus Imaging general manager of operations Keith Ferrel

Having just turned 70 this year, Keith Ferrel is known in the industry for being an innovator in print and is said by many to have relished the opportunities for change and growth within the print industry.

Ferrel, who is the general manager of operations at Cactus Imaging, founded the business alongside Warwick Spicer in 1992. Ferrel was 41 years of age and Spicer, 52 years of age then and they both pioneered large format digital print in Australia and New Zealand.

“Warwick was the CEO of New Zealand Newspapers and I was the sales and marketing director of Auckland Star. He came in one Friday and said “I’m quitting and so are you, and on Monday we’re starting a printing business”. And I said, “Well, what do you know about printing?” to which he replied “As much as you – nothing.” For me, it was a huge jump from sales and marketing to go into print,” Ferrel said.

“Warwick had been in Germany and seen an electrostatic printer and said that’s the way the future is going to go.”

Both Ferrel and Spicer then bought an electrostatic printer and started a print shop in New Zealand. For the first few months, they endeavoured to make a mark in the New Zealand print market as technology was moving away from analog to digital.

“We’ve come up through an era where we were never involved in any analog or screen printing. We bypassed all of that.”

The duo then saw an opportunity to expand into Australia, so gave themselves 12 months to beef up the New Zealand office with staff before making their move.

“When we got here, we worked out of our units the first 12 months, then moved to a serviced office in North Sydney. We were selling here, printing them in New Zealand, them couriering them back here. In 1995, we were selling here and printing in New Zealand more than we were selling and printing in New Zealand itself,” he said.

As a result, in 1996, Cactus Imaging set up its first production plant in Australia and in four years, grew to hire about 40 people.

“We saw further opportunities printing billboards and bigger prints because back in the day there was only one company in Australia producing billboards – MMT. So, we ended up buying a solvent printer and our printer buying spree began and the rest became history,” Ferrel said.

After Ferrel helped get its Australian operations on its feet, he became instrumental in the business’ launch of a branch in India in 2000, driven by Warwick and Dan (our partner in the US). Cactus has since sold its Indian subsidiary but Ferrel said he has always been driven by technological changes in the industry.

“We kept reinvesting in the business, we weren’t just satisfied with staying in New Zealand. We wanted to expand our horizons. The timing was perfect as the industry was also seeing many technological changes at that time,” he mentioned.

“Even when the Olympics was on in Australia in 2000, we spent over $1 million in new equipment when the industry was taking a bit of a dive after the Olympics. While people were struggling and not spending a lot of money, we were.

“We mortgaged everything we had, got our hands on every credit card known to man and got through it that way. There were times when Warwick and I would go without any money so that we could pay our staff.”

For Ferrel, the biggest challenge in his career was getting accepted in the Australian market.

“Coming from New Zealand, the market in Australia was very jealously guarded, but the people that did give us a go, oOh!media being one of them, let us prove that we were just as good as anybody,” he said.

“It came down to perseverance more than anything. We keep the business relevant by diversification. We made a conscious decision in 2006/7 to diversify rather than just be known as just a billboard printer. We bought the right technology, so it gave us a greater scope of delivering on market needs.

“We’ve spent a lot of money on automation as well and that has improved our print accuracies, productivity, efficiencies, time to market, and reduced manpower, especially within the finishing part of the business.”

An advocate for taking risks, Ferrel mentioned that nothing has been too much of a challenge for him.

“If you don’t take risks, you’re going to be left behind. You can’t just sit on your behind and let things go past you. You’ve got to try and lead the market. We’ve made mistakes too, but if you’re not trying you won’t learn from those mistakes,” he said.

His perseverance has also led to Cactus Imaging being the first printer in the world to create fully recyclable printed billboards.

“If you’re printing what you were printing a year ago, you’re not making progress. You’ve got to keep improving what you’re doing. If you’re not aware of what advancements are happening in the world, you’re never going to learn or improve,” he said.

Ferrel is globally recognised as a leader in his field, having been awarded the Fespa World Printer of the year in 2014. He also sits on the Dscoop Global Board as well as the Dscoop APJ Board, and the Fespa Australia Boards.

“I haven’t thought of slowing down; I’m enjoying it far too much at the moment. There will probably come a day when I’ve had enough but it’s not happening in the foreseeable future. I truly enjoy the people and clients that I work with, so that keeps me going,” he added.

“Our dedication to our clients and forever trying to put up the best product available is what people can expect from us and what we at Cactus Imaging will continually strive to do.”

  • Neil Mackay
Neil Mackay

Having been in the printing industry since he was about 17 years old, Neil Mackay (now aged 72) had large shoes to fill at Clark & Mackay since his grandfather and father both ran the business in their tenure. Mackay not only stood up to the challenge, but also delivered, building Clark & Mackay to the forward-thinking business it is today.

Clark &Mackay has a rich family history of 92 years in print. Starting in 1928 in a premise in the heart of Brisbane, Bert Clark and John Mackay commenced their printing business producing print with wooden type, each word being composed one letter at a time using hand-fed and foot powered printing presses.

After WWII, John Mackay’s son Ian joined the firm, along with his brother, Garth, and over the years, changed the process of printing by going from only letterpress machines to offset printing machines.

In the ‘60s Clark & Mackay moved premises to a larger factory at West End. This era consisted of five letterpress machines and one offset press. It had no bindery equipment except for a stapler and a punch machine.

In 1964, Ian Mackay’s son Neil Mackay joined the firm as an apprentice letterpress and offset printing machinest.

Ian’s other son Ross Mackay joined the firm in 1969 as an apprentice compositor, which led Clark & Mackay to the transition of hand set type and hot metal composition to computers and digital printing. To accommodate expansion, the West End facility was extended twice between 1969 and 1994.

“I used to help my father out when he was running the business and from young, I thoroughly enjoyed print. I’ve always wanted to be a printer and that’s what I ended up doing. It has been 56 years since and I’ve loved every moment,” Neil said.

“I started off doing an apprenticeship for five years learning letterpress at that time and I then did an extra course in offset printing because it was just being introduced. I worked in the factory and after a few years I became foreman of the factory, running about 20 staff.

“After a few years, I moved into sales and built the business. I moved into estimating once we had more sales representatives and with time, I ended up running the business.”

In the ‘70s, the purchase of Coronation Press produced a rapidly growing firm. In 1994, the business moved to Rocklea, which quadrupled the size of Clark & Mackay.

In 1997, Neil’s son Paul Mackay joined the firm as an apprentice machinest, marking the 4th generation of Mackays. During this time, the purchase and integration of Leader Press (the printing arm of the Catholic Church) further developed Clark & Mackay.

“Clark & Mackay used to help Coronation Press with work that it couldn’t do. So, when the owner was moving back to Sydney, he approached my father to take over the business,” Neil said.

“As for Leader Press, we were approached by the business as well and we put forth the proposition. The owners picked us as they were a Christian organisation and knew that we’d take care of their staff.

“The acquisition of both companies let us gain more clients and equipment, which led to more business – they were a good complement to Clark & Mackay.”

New state-of-the-art digital presses were introduced in 2002, which further enhanced the capabilities of Clark & Mackay as digital technology emerged.

2008 brought a change as Ross Mackay retired to take up his vocation as a minister in the Uniting Church.

So, in 2014, Neil relocated the business from Rocklea to a more modern establishment at Acacia Ridge. At these premises, Neil upgraded the company’s machinery and technology, keeping Clark & Mackay at the forefront of all facets of print media, including digital printing and variable data also the state of the art in producing self-published books.

“We kept abreast with what was happening in modern times and that kept us successful as a small business over the years. We always listened to what our clients wanted, kept a keen eye on what was happening in the industry, and did our due intelligence on what equipment would be most suitable for us to stay ahead of the game,” Neil added.

“We were also always honest with clients, offered good service, and provided quality products. If you do these three things, you’ll be successful.”

As of November 1, Clark & Mackay has come under the ownership of Queensland independent book publisher, Ocean Reeve Publishing, with no changes to the name of the business or staffing – apart from Neil’s retirement from his role.

Neil said he still intends to continue in print in a consultancy role, including the new owners of Clark & Mackay as and when required.

“Ocean Reeve Publishing is continuing the name and legacy of Clark & Mackay. They’re staying in the same building, keeping my staff who have been with me for a long time, and their acquisition of Clark & Mackay will be a value-add to what they do. I’m happy it has turned out this way,” he said.

“I had no interest in retiring before, but it had to happen sometime. In the new year, I intend to partake in some voluntary charity work – I want to give back to society and give help where it’s needed.”

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