Kayell NSW buys out Kayell Victoria to form new supplier company

The directors of Kayell NSW, Johan du Preez and Robert Gatto, will acquire all shares in the Victorian company headed by Michael Wagner and trade as Kayell Australia with a revised logo, new direction and the tagline IMAGING – GRAPHICS – MEDIA.

Wagner will continue with the new company in a national capacity developing new markets and advertising campaigns. All Kayell Victorian staff will be employed by the new entity.

Formerly focused on colour photography at both the studio and laboratory ends the 35-year-old company broke into autonomous state-based operations in 1999. In recent times Kayell NSW has driven hard into the professional graphic arts market as well as its established professional photographic sector, enabling it to service a bigger customer base with an increasingly broad range of ‘cross-over’ technologies.

“Digital imaging at the professional end has changed all the rules,” says Robert
Gatto, Kayell’s sales & marketing director. “So many of our products and services have applications that transcend photo-imaging, graphic arts, printing, packaging and publishing. We have been selling Epson Pro Graphics printers to both photographers as final output devices, and to publishers as proofing devices, driven by our GMG Color Rip software.”

The company’s colour technology range includes Eizo monitors, GretagMacbeth and ColorVision colour management profiling equipment and GTI viewing booths.

“The time has come when servicing solely the pro photographer limits growth
potential. Indeed, many pro customers themselves are now graphic designers,
having graduated from Adobe Photoshop to InDesign, Quark and PDFs,” said Gatto.

“The broader graphic arts is a national business on a huge scale, valued by the ABS as a $15.7 billion industry in value-added terms, employing in excess of 110,000 Australians. In creating one company – Kayell Australia – to service this industry’s colour and imaging needs both directly and through dealers, we're setting the stage for expansion into a single, but multi-faceted, digital imaging market.”

The change will take effect on July 1, 2005.