February

News in February was dominated by what would become the two biggest print groups after PMP and IPMG Blue Star and Ceon. First the Champ private equity fund made what would he the year's biggest investment in print, buying 84 per cent of the trans-Tasman Blue Star, with Blue Star itself then buying Melbourne mailing house 55 Laser as it sought to replicate its Sydney full service operation. Then rival Pacific Print Group, which had been bought by Gresham private equity the year before, spent $27m to buy Promentum, which was the rebranded Penfold Buscombe, which under Alistair Hill 's tenure had spend much of the previous two years buying up a host of printers itself. February also saw major activity in the newspaper sector, with Independent News & Media bidding $3.8bn for APN News & Media, while News Ltd got the nod from the ACCC to buy Michael Hannan's Federal Publishing Corp.

On a sad note February saw industry identity Sid Thompson succumb to a brain tumor, Sid was remembered primarily as the man who instigated the hugely successful national print awards.

March

March saw several new initiatives from Printing Industries, as it sought to reformat itself under new CEO Philip Andersen, including a highly successful CEO's lunch, which saw the major printers in Sydney and Melbourne come together to hear Federal Minister for Industry Ian Macfarlane outline his vision for the print industry. PMP announced that after careful consideration it would not be entertaining private equity offers for the company while Gresham p/c backed Pacific Print Group rebranded itself and all the companies it had bought as Geon. Green issues hit the headlines, and would stay there all year with Complete Colour wining an award for saving 278,000 litres of water, Fishprint winning a top Savewater! Award, and Printing Industries taking a green roadshow around the country. Exhibitions also made the news with the mother of all trade shows drupa announcing the 2008 show would break all records, local show PrintEx also announcing its biggest ever space, with AusPack also breaking its own record.

April

Print pulling away from recession was April's biggest news story, with figures gathered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicating that print was entering a period of sustained growth.
Print sales and profitability improved, but profitability was still below what you could get for putting your money in a bank.

Profitability was something that had eluded MAN Roland for some time, but in its first year of operations independent of the MAN Group the giant press manufacturer made a decent Euro118m profit - a major advert against diverse group consolidation.

The world's biggest press manufacturer Heidelberg launched its online consumables shop in Australia, and celebrated the 50th anniversary of manufacturing at the Weisloch factory, which at 860,000sqm is the biggest of Heidelberg's 14 production sites.

As wide format printing came clearly into the sights of commercial printers a little known Sydney based R+D operation Silverbrook Research revealed it had developed an inkjet printer that operated at a blistering one foot per second. DES continued its rapid growth, following its acquisition of Cyrachyrome with the purchase of Colorite, although it was somewhat inevitable after DES won the agency for X-Rite.

May

May saw a surprisingly successful PrintEx, the country's biggest print show of the year. From the opening bell to the closing whistle the Sydney exhibition centre buzzed with activity (Thursday evening excepted), delivering big grins to exhibitors as printers came with open minds and open chequebooks.

Finsbury Green won the applause of its peers at a boisterous National print Awards, it won three golds, more than anyone else, with Hannanprint, RA Printing, Platypus, Pettaras and D&D Global all picking up two. Altogether some 27 printers won Gold.

May also saw the launch of the inaugural Women in Print events, a series of dinner functions around the country which attracted some 300 women eager to highlight their contribution to what has been one of the last male bastions. Initiated by Heidelberg the Women in Print events will continue into the new year.

The increasing skill shortage came to the forefront of printers' minds, with a special report funded by the Federal Government focusing on the print industry as a case study illustrating the skills shortage issue and advocating possible solutions.

American digital print giant Yamagata set up in Australia running HP Indigo presses as part of its effort to be a global supplier, while Lithocraft opened its swish new production centre in Melbourne.

June

The private equity funds opened their wallets again, with Blue Star back on the acquisition trail, buying Canberra's biggest printer, National Capital Printing, along with Complete Mail & Warehousing, while Geon bought Dynamic Press, the biggest printer on Sydney's northern beaches.

Blue Star also made its move into digital colour printing, with the purchase of a pair of Fuji Xerox iGen3s, one each for its newly rebranded Blue Star Go digital print businesses in Sydney and Melbourne. Fuji Xerox Australia also hit the headlines with the world launch of its FX 490/980 continuous colour reel-to-reel printer, with UPA in Melbourne the first printer in the world to receive one. HPA itself was the subject of a major bidding battle, as majority owner Kodak decided to sell.

Book printing was also in the news, with the nation's two big,gest book printers PMP's Griffin Press and McPherson's announcing they were merging, although the ACCC would later knock back the deal, and the number three book printer Ligare being bought by Knox private equity. On the supply side GBC bought Hudsons, with former Hudsons managing director and PrintEx president Grant Churchill going over to become head of the new GBC print division.

June was also the month when independent research from TNS reconfirmed that Australian Printer was officially the nation's best read print title, with more owners and managers of Australian printers reading it than any other print magazine.

July

The biggest storm print has seen in some time was caused by software giant Adobe, which announced it would be including a new link in its latest versions of Acrobat and Acrobat Reader - Send to FedEx Kinkos. While there are only nine FedEx Kinko print shops in Australia there are more than a thousand in the US, which led a barrage of criticism against the boys from San Jose.

Consolidation continued apace, when iconic printer McMillan became the latest company to join the Blue Star stable, with Bob MeMillan finally potting pen to paper in a deal that had been tooted for six months, and included both McMilIan Print in Sydney and Pirion Printing in Canberra. And showing that consolidation is not the sole preserve of the big groups, in Melbourne Complete Colour bought RD Graphics.

Dr Sharman Stone became the latest Federal Minister to front the country's leading printers at a Printing Industries lunch, as she called on printers to alleviate the skill shortage by opening up their workplaces to the disabled, single mums, older workers, indigenous workers and part time staff.

 

August

To its credit Adobe caved in under immense pressure from the world's printers and announced it would remove the Send to FedEx Kinkos button from Acrobat, gaining plaudits from the industry for listening. Meanwhile rival Quark made hay by announcing it would make its software available free to students.

Salmat beat off fierce competition from private equity funds to snap up HPA just two days after the ACCC gave it the go-ahead for the deal. Salmat bid a whopping 36 per cent premium on NPA's share price, paying $318m for its biggest rival to create an $865m company The ACCC said while the new entity would dominate the market there was plenty of opportunity and low barriers for new players to enter.

Bucking the perception that technological development is mainly the preserve of the new digital world this year's prestigious Intertech GATE Awards saw the big trio of German heavy metal companies pick up four awards, with Heidelberg winning two, MAN Roland and KBA one each, while only Océ from the digital world was a winner.

In wide format Epson launched its new product range, which included its entry into the 1.5m market with the Stylus Pro 11880. Epson also launched new inks and a new print head. Agfa's wide format division launched its new C3 customer support strategy for inkiet, while Océ launched its new C59060 ecosolvent printer and Roland DC launched its new green solvent media EcoMedia.

 

September

The focus switched to mailing houses in September, with a trio of mailing houses combined to form a new single entity iGroup Australia covering the eastern seaboard, with the intention of moving into other states next year. Sydney's Mailroom Express, Victoria 's Data Print and Mail, and SmartComm in Queensland in their combined form are now one of the three biggest mailing houses in the country, after Salmat, joining QM and Security Mail at the top of the tree.

And still in the mailing world Brisbane-based mailhouse Impressive Laser Solutions joined Geon, as Geon sought to become an end-to-end solutions provider in the sunshine state.

CPI became a national dealer for the Kodak NexPress. CPI entered the digital print world 12 months earlier taking the agencies for several digital finishing equipment manufacturers. A new digital business proposition came from Colour Central, which invited printers to spend $40,000 in order to buy a certain amount of digital colour print at cost price, response was mixed.

And Digital Impressions Group, a new digital supplies company was formed, headed by former Xeikon and Kodak identity Warren Davey. Its first offering is the French built Meteor digital press and finishing equipment.

October

The money was flowing again as PMP spent $80m to buy Victorian heatset rival Times Printers, in a cash and shares deal that gave Times' parent Fraser & Neave an 11 per cent stake in PMP and PMP an alliance in Asia.

Times had been in existence for six years and was created from the ashes of the failed and controversial Diamond Press.

Meanwhile Geon made its first foray west when it bought one of Perth's top two printers Advance Press in what Geon CEO Cordon Towell described as a key strategic move. And freshly cashed up Ligare Book Printers bought one of its main rivals, Southwood Press.

In the biggest paper deal since PaperlinX bought Spicers six years ago, CPI bought Red Paper Group, which includes the Edwards Dunlop and Raleigh Paper merchants. CPI Paper will now be a $550m a year business. In the same month Victoria's Triangle Paper collapsed just two years after starting out.

October saw print hit the national headlines, but for all the wrong reasons when a Melbourne printer became the first company to be successfully prosecuted for foreign worker breaches under the 457 Visa workplace laws. Aprint company director Yu Tu Chuan was forced to pay four workers almost $100,000 in withheld wages and benefits, and was fined almost $10,000 for breaches of the Workplace Act.

The world 's biggest print show of 2007 Igas welcomed 130,000 printers, including a fair smattering of Aussies who ordered big; deals signed included Heidelberg selling a ten-colour SM 102 to Complete Colour, CPI sold a tencolour Komori LS1O4P to Aster Colour Print, and Cyber sold a pair of Akiyama 40" ten-colour stacked perfectors to Finsbury Green.

November

November began with the news that iconic Melbourne pre-press and wide format house Colour Graphic was closing. Established more than 30 years ago by Ken Robertson Colour Craphic at one time bandied virtually all the prepress for every poster printed in Australia. For the past 15 years it had been a wide format print pioneer. Grays online auctioned off its equipment.

Franchise chain Worldwide Online Printing, which itself had been bought by private equity 18 months ago, was in the spotlight with the opening on successive days of Queensland's biggest digital print centre, created as a hub for its franchisees, and a new NSW offset production hub, equipped with Kodak CTP and a new Ryobi Al press. In addition, Worldwide franchisee Andrew Robertson from Brisbane won the Australian franchisee of the year award.

Green issues continued to top the agenda, with Fuji Xerox launching its third sustainability report at a meat-free lunch in Sydney, meat-free due to the high carbon footprint meat production apparently has.

PaperlinX entered the wide format market, in both media and hardware, with the purchase of iMedia and immediately announced plans to take the Melbourne operation national. And finally the long running court battle between CPI and Stora Enso over the debt of Boomerang Paper finally came to an end with a result in CPI 's favour, which will add a healthy $7m to its balance sheet next June. AP

 

Exit stage left: 2007 saw a host of long time industry identities bid adieu to print, including the musical Kelvin Kerney, latterly of CPI

All for one and one for all (left to right): Printing Industries national president, Peter Lane; fumier Federal Minister fur Industry, Tourism and Resources, Ian Macfar!anc; and Printing Industries CEO, Philip Andersen

Caption Text:
Green issues came to the fare in 2007: Fish print becomes a GECA certified printer

They came, they saw, they conquered

MORE money came into the print industry in 2007 than ever before, with a host of well known companies changing hands...