foil  appointments 
Three decades after establishing New Zealand’s leading foil distributor, Alan Steer has stepped down from his position as managing director of API Foils (New Zealand) in favour of semi-retirement. Warren Hadler has just taken over the general manager’s role, says he’s looking forward to building on API’s solid growth performance based on its customer service.

It won’t be the last the print finishing industry sees of Alan however. He’s leaving his hand in the company he’s steered for 34 years to work two days a week in a consultancy role for the time being.

As with most people who’ve served the printing and print finishing industry over such a long period of time, there have been significant technological and market developments during that time.

Hot foils stand out as a product range that has changed both at the development and application ends of the business which has allowed a proliferation of the product range for the creative use by designers, printers and marketers.

Today’s users are looking for pearlescent, metallic, textured, layered and holographic finishes which provides a stunning look for special effect jobs, he says.

A more alarming development is the shrinkage of API’s initial market, which instigated the diversification into other consumables and machinery which is a growing part of API’s business.

“Shoes and clothing all used our product at one time, but New Zealand goods manufacturers who use foil are disappearing, and the greeting card market has also shrunk. Packaging is another industry that has shrunk to the point where Auckland now has only a few manufacturers that used foil, down from the 15 or so some years ago,” he adds.

An industry that is growing, and rapidly, is the label industry, a major purchaser of foils in this country.

Early on in the piece Alan says it was obvious that no company could be a one-product firm in New Zealand and he quickly diversified into other consumables and equipment.

Through API’s various agencies, it has been at the forefront of producing some of the most modern machinery including the automatic die-making Wonder Bender, for bending the steel, the high speed, semi-automatic Wire O Bind 3300 binding machine and the Alpha-Doc automatic punching machine.