Director, Daniel Lanigan, who is also president of the Print Finishers Association says it appears a lot of businesses have been slow during the winter, but now the election is over, work has picked up again.
“The economy is supposed to be booming but it has been a very dry year for many of our members. I can only put it down to the election,” he says.
“The areas we have diversified into, like the book binding and the wiro-binding fields have been good.”
So good, that the company has taken on another book binder, German-trained Annett Ellrich-Neugeba to help company adult apprentice Megan Horton keep up with the hand binding work.
Daniel says that side of the business has grown steadily in the past 12 months and now makes up twenty five per cent of the company’s total turnover. He says that hand binding will always be in demand, but there are very few people being trained up to take over from the older binders who are now retiring.
“Our apprentice is working out really well and I would like to see her become a candidate for the top apprentice award at some stage.” He says they have brought their second hand-binding staff member from overseas to help out.
The second area that Fastfold has diversified into is wiro-binding, and that is also beginning to expand.
The company purchased some machinery for wiro-binding at Melbourne’s PacPrint trade show this year, and Daniel says they are now winding up that aspect of their business, while being careful to manage the growth.
“We’ve always done wiro-binding in a small way, but with our semi-automatic equipment now up and running, we are actively looking for work.”
He says they introduced the new finishing solution at the request of Fastfold’s clients who already used the company for other finishing work.
He believes it will be increasingly important for finishing companies to diversify because he says the market for folding, stitching and trimming is shrinking as printers opt to do it themselves. He also cites Auckland’s traffic problems which has partly driven printers to bring their finishing in-house and the ’we want it yesterday’ mentality which has made it particularly difficult for independent finishers who find the tight production deadlines almost impossible to work with on occasions.
