Printcentre Sydney fires up with twin Onset

Digital print group The Printcentre is running a second production facility, this time in Sydney, with the city’s first Inca Onset S40i from Fujifilm, to expand its footprint and take pressure off its Melbourne operations.

The company is already operating an identical 3.14m x 1.6m flatbed Inca Onset S40i at its original Port Melbourne site to service its client base of brand advertisers and agencies with a variety of work, but mostly high visibility POS, street furniture posters, outdoor advertising and a range of rigid material applications for outdoor.

The new Sydney shop, in the inner-city suburb of Rosebery, is intended to capture business from nearby advertising agencies, media buyers and national advertisers. It opened in December last year and so caught the Christmas rush – Sean Elvin, general manager of sales and operations at The Printcentre Sydney, tells Australian Printer, “It was absolute chaos, so it was good to have a machine that turns work out so quickly; we kept the jobs flying out the door.”

In the new year the company hopes to impress the locals with its production power; Elvin says, “The people that have seen the Onset have been blown away by the size, speed and quality that we get from it, and its capability in terms of various substrates it can print on. I think once word gets out and more people come and see it, it is going to be massive for business in Sydney.”

Darren Soppi, director of The Printcentre, adds, “Clients will be able to visit the site for press checks without significant travel time in Sydney, and there are also huge logistical benefits in that jobs destined for Sydney, Melbourne and national distribution are produced closer to their markets and destinations, to be delivered without excessive use of road and air transport.

“Having combined capacity of around 980sqm per hour over both plants, each of which will operate 16 hour days, I don’t think there are any flatbed printing companies in Australia who can output 31,000 square metres in a day at this quality resolution. We have entered the Sydney market for numerous reasons, not the least being that this will be the only Onset S40i currently in the NSW market. We feel that with two Inca Onset S40is we have a strong point of difference to other large format digital printers Australia-wide.”

Installing a second Onset means the group can split time-critical national jobs across its plants if necessary, with consistent results; Soppi says, “Because we have both the Sydney and Port Melbourne Onset S40i presses ICC profiled we can produce identical colour in both states. We’ve doubled our flatbed UV capacity, halved the travel time for national deliveries, and can produce an identical print job at both plants.

“When the Onset S40i arrived on the market we felt it was the only flatbed UV machine that could match screen printing in quality and productivity. Now just ten months after installing our first S40i in Melbourne, we feel strongly that the Inca Onset S40i is still ahead of the pack. We did look at alternatives and closely surveyed the market, but we felt that the S40i’s package of performance and quality, backed by the service and technical back up offered by Fujifilm, made the decision relatively easy.”

Once its Rosebery site is fully operational the company says it will employ more than 20 staff to run the Onset and matching flatbed forme-cutting tables, as well as a variety of roll-to-roll solvents and UV digital machines up to five metres wide, with banner and billboard fabrication including welding, mounting and laminating.

It says it intends to offer fast turn-around service to its existing client base, while considering options for expansion and possible new acquisitions around Australia.

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