Agfa Relocates To High Tech Facility

After 40 years at Nunawading a new chapter begins at Burwood.

After over forty years at its landmark Nunawading site, Agfa will relocate to a new high tech facility in Burwood as from last Monday (October 11th). In addressing staff at a farewell to Nunawading recently appointed Managing Director, Bruce Blythe described the much anticipated move as defining moment for the company whilst Nunawading closes a chapter on the old Agfa, Burwood encapsulates the new Agfa and opens a new chapter on a market leading digital solutions provider of which Agfa is now recognised as.

MD Bruce Blythe addresses the Agfa staff for the final time at Nunawading; the move is a defining moment for the company.

The move also means that Agfa Graphic Systems business group will be physically re-united with the rest of the organisation after a geographical break of nearly five years. Agfa prepress and printing arm (Graphic Systems) has operated from the former Printing Technologies site in Blackburn since Agfa took over the company in late 1999. The reason for operating from two sites was due to the rapid expansion Agfa has undergone since the mid nineties.

Blythe went on to say there will be no disruption to normal operations because of the move which saw 180 staff relocated over last weekend. It was business-as-usual when the new office opened on Monday.

Located on the corner of Burwood Highway and Station Street in Burwood, the new office has undergone a completely new fit-out. It will provide staff with a modern corporate facility with all business groups under the one roof.

Agfa has also merged its Melbourne (Blackburn and Nunawading) warehouse facilities to new premises in the Scoresby industrial park adjacent to the planned Mitcham-Frankston Freeway.

One Chapter closes, and a new one begins.

Traditionally Agfa was a film-orientated company. A wide assortment of products, ranged from photographic film for amateur cameras up to films for graphic applications and health care (X-Ray). In the main these analogue applications?found a home for national customer support from the Nunawading facility for over four decades.

Agfa has moved rapidly to embrace the advantages of the digital era. The company now provides a wide assortment of products and services for its major business groups.
In the graphic industry, besides the traditional prepress films, Agfa is now providing a full assortment of digital printing plates (CTP), related equipment and product software (workflow).
In HealthCare, Agfa assortment ranges from the traditional x-ray films, including specialities like mammography and dental film, up to total digital solutions for health care.

Agfa now supplies total integrated digital solutions in, graphic arts, large format display and poster markets as well as health care.

Agfa's turnover in 2003 was A$237 million in the Oceania region with a very large percentage of this dedicated to the new digital businesses that Agfa successfully operates in. With the rapid growth in new digital business in all business groups Agfa local management committee was charged with finding suitable facilities that could accommodate support, training and service facilities for the new markets. The Burwood site with its proximity to high speed IT infrastructure meant that Agfa has a solution for now and the future.

Local Support, an Agfa tradition.

Traditionally Agfa's presence in Australia dates back to 1925 when Henry H. York and Company successfully negotiated the agency to sell Agfa products. In New Zealand Henry York sold Agfa products after establishing offices in the 1950s.
So as to accommodate the new found Australian passion for photography Henry H York purchased the Nunawading site in the mid-fifties with construction of its national headquarters in 1959.

The Nunawading site in 1956, purchased by Agfa agent Henry H York for a national HQ.

In 1961 the York family invoked a provision of an agreement with Agfa whereby they could call on the German shareholders to purchase the family's shares at a price calculated in accordance with an agreed formula. Thus closed the initial chapter in the Australian history of the company we know today. Soon laboratory facilities where added and for the next several decades many Australians slide and 8mm movie film memories were processed at the Nunawading site.

Gevaert's representation in Australia began in the early 1960s. In anticipation of a united Europe, Agfa AG and Belgium's leading photographic firm, Gevaert Photo-Producten NV, merged to form the Agfa-Gevaert Group. As a result, Agfa-Gevaert Limited was formed in Australia in 1964; a wholly owned subsidiary of the parent company. Agfa-Gevaert New Zealand Limited was also established in the 1960s.

Building commences on the Nunawading site in early 1959.

As the new Agfa-Gevaert Limited grew in the 1960s the property next door was purchased (Tunstall Park) to allow for first Victorian branch administration facilities to be built and later in the 1970s a state of the art warehouse complex.

It was in the 1970s that the Australian Printing industry saw a rapid growth in colour printing due to several factors including the new technology direct screen separation. This allowed specialist trade shops to screen separations directly to panchromatic with film utilising a process camera or enlarger. Agfa having access to European process technology set up a screening facility on the Tunstall Park location and fitted it out with what was then a state of the art MagnaColor enlarger. Brian Sharp, the Technical PrePress Manager at Wilke Colour was then employed as technical director and oversaw a program of technical training for Agfa staff and the trade in general.


A litho film process control course in the early 1980s conducted at the Nunawading technical centre.

Not to stay still for too long, this Graphic Arts technical training facility had to reflect changes in the industry, so when direct screening was replaced by the industry's first drum scanners in the late 1970s Agfa conducted scanner training courses with Linotype-KS Paul and installed one of the first contact screen scanners in the country.

Although not in the business then of selling scanners Agfa ran many courses on scanner process control, scan film applications and colour separation. So successful was this joint venture that the scanning heavy weights of the time Siemens (Dr Hell) and Delairco (Crosfield) replicated similar facilities in Melbourne and utilised Agfa scan films in their operations.

In the 1980s with the growth in colour separation due to the enormous amount of drum scanners flooding into Australia, the industry experienced a huge demand in film combining. Again Agfa set up training facilities for film assembly and dry etching with the ability to train and demonstrate on panchromatic, yellow-light and daylight film products.

At the same time Agfa experienced a peak in sales of its now world famous CopyProof diffusion transfer bromide products. CopyProof was used in almost every newspaper, design studio and repro shop in the country and this led to a surge in process camera sales. The Nunawading technical centre was again transferred into the largest technical facility in the Southern Hemisphere.

Under Bruce Lowery (General Manager Reprographics) and Brian Sharp, guidance special automatic roller shutters were incorporated into the building design so at the touch of a button any of the spacious showrooms could be transformed quickly into darkroom conditions utilising a range of materials and safelights. Like the earlier technical facilities this too proved very successful and similar designed darkrooms were utilised at the Melbourne College of Printing and Graphic Arts based on Agfa design and expertise.

right: The automated darkroom facilities for cameras circa 1986.

With the 1980 coming rapidly to a close the new decade saw film combining, and conventional paste-up surpassed by PostScript imaging technology and again the Nunawading technical facility transformed to meet expectations of the industry. It was at DRUPA 1990 that Agfa released the SelectSet 5000, one of the first colour capable imagesetters available at that time.

Such was the interest in the new PostScript technology that Agfa installed one of the first digital prepress networks in the country to showcase the new imaging technology. For the first time in one location staff and customers could train on all manner of equipment from design through to press (A small press was installed by Heidelberg as a joint venture for training). The digital network included digital camera, scanners, imagesetters, proofing facilities, platemaking and printing. Again Brian Sharp was utilised in the planning and operation of the facility, it was to be his last major project prior to retirement

Garry Muratore Marketing Manager & Brian Sharp Technical Manager at the opening of the digital centre in July 1994.

After Agfa launched the Chromapress at IPEX 93, the digital centre was extended to include digital printing facilities, which were opened in late 1995. During this time the digital print centre was utilised for training, R&D and customer support for the entire Asia Pacific region. As well as support and training the centre was also used for a range of promotional and marketing events. Such events included press conferences for various product launches as well as marketing functions for direct clients.

One such memorable event was during the 1996 Melbourne Grand Prix when Sauber Driver Johnny Herbert as part of a worldwide sponsorship deal by Agfa worked with digital printing pioneer Ken Gilles (Digital Network Australia) in the promotion of variable data printing utilising the Nunawading technical facilities.

FI Driver Johnny Herbert with Ken Gillies.

With the takeover of Dupont Printing and Publishing business in 1997, the technical facility was again expanded to incorporate a range of platemaking support services, one being the new computer to plate technology of which both Dupont and Agfa were pioneers. With strong interest in CTP generated out of PakPrint 96, it was decided to install an in house CTP facility coinciding with the acquisition of Dupont. The CTP facility was the first of its kind for any vendor in Australia and had the ability to provide support and training services for both LithoStar and SilverLith digital plates.

A photo shoot at the Nunawading technical centre for the launch of the Avantra imagesetters range in the mid-nineties/

Up until early 2000 the Nunawading technical centre was in continuous use and was pivotal in the successful launch of Agfa PDF based workflow system Apogee. It was around this time with the acquisition of Printing Technologies (one of Agfa national distributors) that the graphic technical centre was moved from Nunawading to the newly acquired Printing Technologies' site at nearby Blackburn.

Local Support continues for a new generation.
With the printing and graphic arts industry rapidly moving to digital applications and processes, the search for a new location had to factor in the need to provide customers with a different type of support to that of what was typical in past decades. Whilst some vendors have opted for outer suburb locations to reduce costs Agfa has looked to establishing itself in an area close to its customer base, but able to utilise high speed IT infrastructure, hence the decision to move to Greenwood Park at Burwood.

This modern purpose built facility allows Agfa to take advantage of a modern network infrastructure established by Telstra who operate close by. Regional Global Services Manager Harry Kontogiannis is co-ordinating the move to Burwood with the release of Agfa :IntellSyst service. :IntellSyst is a first for Australia and allows Agfa to utilise state of the art IT infrastructure to build on an existing service and support base. our customers' success depends on equipment uptime and consistently high quality results, said Kontogiannis.

Many Agfa customers now operate 24 hours a day in complex production environments that employ a diverse rang of equipment, software and pre-press technologies. A constant challenge for Agfa is to deliver superior customer support and this is the reason we will implement :IntelliSyst in Australia and New Zealand.

Some of the racks of Agfa IT support utilised in the :IntellSyst system. The Burwood site was chosen to take advantage of a high-speed digital network/

:IntellSyst is the latest remote servicing system from Agfa and utilises the latest in Intelligent Device Monitoring (IDM) technology to mange remote systems securely over the internet to customer sites across the Oceania region. The goal of the new Burwood support centre and the implementation of :IntellSyst is to provide customers with

Faster response time for service

Higher equipment uptime

More effective, proactive maintenance

:IntelliSyst gives customer equipment the ability to monitor their own performance and to send Agfa local customer support teams routine performance data and problem alerts customer equipment can now in effect call for an Agfa service person when it needs one, said Kontogiannis.

Agfa is planning to utilise :IntelliSyst at select customers sites from the end of October with the full-scale rollout commencing in 2005.

Agfa new Burwood facility is located in the Greenwood Business Park at 301 Burwood Highway Burwood Victoria 3125 (Cnr Burwood Highway and Station Street).

The new office phone number is 03 8808 4000