As formal training pathways into print continue to fade, CMYKhub is investing in the industry’s future through its cadet programme, which is creating a new generation of print professionals through practical, hands-on training.
Print21 first wrote about the CMYKhub cadet programme in 2019, back when the skills shortage was already biting. The pitch was straightforward – with formal apprenticeships and trade courses thinning out, CMYKhub would build its own pathway in-house.
By giving newcomers hands-on experience across the business, the trade printer is building skilled careers from the ground up through a structured six months of exposure across pre-press, wide format, offset, finishing, dispatch and a look at sales and marketing, inside a development arc that runs out to around two years.
“The classic Aussie path is to start at the bottom and work your way up," Paul Norton, national sales manager Paul Norton told Print21 back in 2019, describing a programme modelled on his own entry into the trade.
Seven years on, the question worth asking isn't whether the idea was sound. It's whether it lasted. Three of the cadets from that era are still with the business, and the careers they've built answer the question better than any prospectus could.
The three originals haven't just stayed, they've grown into three completely different careers, which the company said is the clearest sign that the model works – one specialised deep into a critical machine, one became the human connection between resellers and the factory, and one built durable expertise in the operations that keep the whole place moving.
From school leaver to the binder
Frank Liparota joined in 2018, straight out of school. “It was my first job outside of school. I did not know a thing about printing,” he said. “I needed a job, and I really liked what I saw walking around the factories – and loved it ever since.”
He rotated through the business, found he fit best in digital, and started out packing and running smaller machines. Then he was introduced to the perfect binder.
Today, he's the lead machine operator on it – a central part of CMYKhub's national book production operation, built around a Horizon CABS4000 binding line that the company invested in as demand for short-run book work surged.
The binder, once installed in a former storage area, has since moved into CMYKhub's purpose-built headquarters at Keilor Park, forming the book production hub the company set out to build.
The people in the process
Before CMYKhub, Samuel Brikhia was unemployed, picking up odd handyman jobs with his father, and knew nothing about commercial print.
“Other than little office printers, I knew essentially nothing,” he said. “I remember on my induction, when Paul was showing me around and I saw the offset press for the first time – I was shocked. I couldn't believe a printer could be as big as a bus.”
He started in dispatch, moved into estimating within a year and spent a couple of years there. Then came a stint on the road as an account manager in the Melbourne region, before settling into what's now the central orders team.
It's a role that has made him the gateway between CMYKhub's resellers and its pre-press and production teams.
“I got the opportunity to go out and see clients, which was pretty special to be trusted with,” he added. “I've now established myself more in that orders role, helping customers via email and over the phone. I've had the chance to try multiple different roles, which has been good.”
Doing it again, and again
The clearest signal that CMYKhub still believes in the model is that it's still running it. Three new cadets have joined the Victorian operation – Emilie O'Keeffe and April Cirona in dispatch and bindery, and Charlotte Abraham in wide format finishing and packing.
A fourth role has been advertised at the Brisbane hub, taking the programme to another state rather than leaving it a Melbourne experiment.
And already, the cadets are finding the areas that pull at them – Cirona wants to learn the router cutter or Frank's perfect binder; Abraham is drawn to the large-format printers; while O'Keeffe has her eye on the company's new soft signage division.
As Norton puts it, that's exactly the moment the cadetship is designed to create – get people into the part of the business they actually like, and back them.
“Frank's running one of our most expensive pieces of equipment, and he had to learn that from nothing. Sam went through the whole business,” Norton added. “You could end up managing a portion of the warehouse, the bindery, wide format – wherever it takes you.”
Not every cadet has stayed, and Norton is candid about that – though he frames it as a measure of the programme working, not failing. A further three cadets moved on to careers elsewhere after four to seven years with the business.
“That's a fair commitment, given how often people move around these days,” he explained. “In fairness, they were opportunities that fit their development, where we didn't have the right fit for them. To be part of someone's career, and to see them develop to the point where others recognise their value too – that's fantastic.
“This platform isn't about locking people into print. It's about developing careers, with print as the platform and the industry they grow within – and hopefully stay. Plenty of people once devoted a whole working life to one industry. That's just not as common anymore.”