To a back-drop of negative economic news, recession fears and almost 500 manufacturing job losses in Dunedin last week, Taieri Print at Sunnyvale is working double shifts between 6am-11pm and in the pre-Christmas rush working 24/7 during the three months to November, chief
executive Ken Blair said yesterday.
"No it's not easy. This is a capital intensive, low margin, high volume business which needs economies of scale to survive. Every [equipment] change means putting your hand in your pocket for at least a quarter of a million dollars,'' Mr Blair said.
The southern printing sector has been far from immune to changing markets and competition, having already been through a harsh consolidation process in March last year which saw 48 jobs lost from Wickliffe Press, followed a week later by 21 jobs lost with the closure of the 135-year-
old Tablet Print.
Taieri Print employed three former Tablet staff, with numbers increasing from 26 to 40 during the past year and the signing of an apprentice graphic designer last week.
At the end of 2007 Taieri Print imported and installed about $3.5 million of Heidelberg printing equipment from Germany, including the only 10-colour Speedmaster off-set press in the southern hemisphere, plus the accompanying Heidelberg equipment to make plates, collate print runs, plus machine-trim and wrap orders which range into the tens of thousands of copies.
Company owner Peter Moore - who at one point sold the family home to buy a four-colour press and lived in the factory for eight years - said annual turnover had increased from $35,000 in 1976 to several million dollars.
However, with major companies having pulled out of Dunedin, printing was becoming increasingly competitive among the surviving companies. He credits the company's success, and forecast of a 30% increase in sales during the next two years, to hard work chasing contracts and the abilities of staff.
About 80% of work is generated locally and the balance from around the South and North Island, he said.
Taieri Print began in 1881 to print the Taieri Advocate. Mr Moore and wife Sue purchased the company in 1976 and amalgamated it with S. M. Brown Print of Princes St in 1983, operating from several Mosgiel addresses and expanding with each move. It moved to its present site
in 2003.
