The name Scott Print is embedded in Western Australia’s printing culture like no other. Founded in 1978 by Michael and Dudley Scott, management today is under the next generation, John and Tim Scott. The production site on Perth’s north side is perfectly located for access to the CBD, freeways, airport and regional centres. In the foyer proudly sits an ornate Columbian letterpress from the 1850s, but there is nothing old-fashioned about what lies beyond the doors.
Scott Print’s motto of ‘Prepare-Print-Deliver’ is to be seen all around its spacious buildings, which house its two main offset production presses, an eight-colour B1 Komori G840P featuring H-UV ink curing, and a six-colour B2 Komori S629, also with H-UV. Digital printing is accomplished on an HP Indigo and Fuji Xerox Color 1000i. The quality of output from this modern facility recently earned Scott Print no fewer than 12 gold medals in the WA PICA Awards, more than double the number of the nearest rival.
Dedicated to print
Managing director John Scott serves on the board of the Printing Industries Association of Australia in a national capacity and is deeply involved in the strategy planning of the peak body representing Australia’s $6 billion print industry.
“Our mission is simple,” says Scott, “we prepare, print and deliver world class sustainable communication solutions and we are large enough to impress but small enough to care closely for our clients’ needs. With local WA, Australian national and international clientele, we must strive to meet world-best practices at all levels. Our ISO accreditations include ISO14001 (environmental management), ISO9001 (quality assurance) and ISO12647-2 (colour standards). We also use FSC paper and board products wherever possible.”
One print production area that has long been a major user of water, power and chemicals is the prepress department where the plates for mounting onto the printing presses are created. For Scott Print, the targets for reducing waste in all these three resources have been met and exceeded by the introduction of Fujifilm Superia plates, processing and chemistry.
“Superia fits perfectly in our pursuit of environmental excellence, and delivers considerable cost savings as well,” says Scott. “It’s a prepress solution that delivers on its promises all the way back to Fujifilm’s own manufacturing plants in the Netherlands, USA, Japan and China. We have seen dramatic reduction in water, chemical and power use and the savings go all the way to the pressroom where less paper is wasted and jobs come up to colour faster, with far fewer re-makes.”
Superia keeps on delivering
In Scott Print’s prepress department, the experienced Dean Metcalfe oversees plate production. Metcalfe moved to Perth from Ireland in 2012 and is an experience Mac operator and prepress workflow expert.
“We changed to Fujifilm plates primarily because, when we installed the Komori UV presses, we found Superia LH-PJE plates performed much better than any other plate with the UV inks, even without baking. We then discovered the other benefits based on Superia lo-chemo processing technology and the results are amazing,” he says.
“Our chemistry and water use has more than halved,” says Metcalfe, “even with the same or slightly higher number of plates processed. Plate consistency is also much more stable. Before, we had dot tolerance of between 1% and 3% and if we went over this, it caused problems. Now, with Superia, our dot tolerance is between 1% and 2% and highly consistent.”
Metcalfe has also seen an extension of developer batch life and a reduction in processor service calls for cleaning: “Previously, we would drop chemistry about every three months and a technician would service the processors, and it would be out of action. Now, it’s about every six months and soon we will be able to go a full year between servicing. This is all made possible by Superia’s ZAC lo-chem technology measuring the processor bath status and replenishing with exactly the required amount to keep within spec. The previous method was guesswork.”
WA account manager for Fujifilm, Paul Acton, praises Scott Print’s high demands. “Scott Print has blue-chip clients and we need to deliver blue-chip services. Printers such as Scott Print make us better at what we do – it’s a pleasure to see first-hand Superia’s reduction is waste, water, chemistry and power use while quality continues to escalate,” he says.
John Scott echoes this sentiment: “Superia is a winning formula and Fujifilm’s back-up service is second-to-none. It enables us to get on with our main task of Prepare-Print-Deliver!”