Business as usual for EFI Australia

Restructure will have no adverse impact on customers in Australia and NZ.

The local arm of EFI and its seven staff may have vacated its North Sydney headquarters to work from home, but according to Anthony Parnemann, country manager for Australia and New Zealand, the business impact has been minimised. Parnemann has taken up the newly created country manager’s roll in addition to heading up the Fiery business in Asia Pacific.

“We realised that as a company we were not going to be immune to the global economic situation and needed to cut our costs in a way that would have the least effect on our customers and our staff,” he said

Parnemann says that the decision to leave the office was made now to get the maximum benefit from costs write offs and to leave the business better able to withstand the impact of the slowing economy.

 “Most of our staff were often travelling or working from the customer’s premises, so for the most part the office was underutilised,” Parnemann explained, dismissing some sensational media coverage. “It’s still business as usual.”

Like most businesses – in and outside of the printing industry – EFI has not been able to escape some of the onset of a financial meltdown, but Parnemann is confident of the company’s future, particularly at PacPrint where it will display the new range of Inkjet Systems for label and grand format printing, MIS systems to better manage print businesses and the new Command Workstation 5 for Fiery.

Parnemann added that the financial crisis is helping to generate interest in all EFI’s product areas: the inkjet range can add additional revenue streams for a print shop, the MIS systems allow them to better manage their business, and the fiery assists those targeting the growing market of shorter and more personalised print runs.

EFI now has a serviced office in North Sydney, where the staff gather for meetings when required.