Lithocraft opens 1st Eurografica-designed sheetfed plant in Australia
Coming hard on the heels of last year’s acquisition of LynchPrint, Lithocraft, along with its corporate design partner Collyers & Associates, have quit its long-time South Melbourne premises for a unique manufacturing facility in Truganina. Its three directors, Iain Morley, Kevin Pidgeon and Nick O’Sullivan (pictured below right to left) celebrated the move last night with an official opening of the 10,000 sq metre plant.
In front of a large turnout of customers, Kevin Pidgeon paid tribute to the founding vision of Iain Morley who started the business in 1962. Lithocraft has built its business on servicing the high-end design world and financial industry. It is also the Australian representative for C&C Printing of China, which dos much of its non-time-sensitive work
When the time came to move from the cramped South Melbourne premises, the company took the innovative approach of getting Eurografica, a division of MAN Roland, to design a custom-built facility. Best known here for its design of the Fairfax newspaper plant at Tullamaraine, Eurografica sent one of its designers to study the company’s requirements and came up with a design to enhance workflow and productivity. The result is the first commercial sheetfed greenfield site designed by the company in Australia.
The state of the art plant has three MAN Roland presses, an eight and a six-colour 700 and a new six-colour half size 500. A new Fujifilm Luxel CTP engine drives the prepress while a sizeable bindery and finishing department makes use of much of the Lynchprint equipment.
The directors professed themselves well pleased with the entire operation – the speed of construction, the finished design and the fact that it all came in under budget. “Now we just have to get plenty of work to make some of it back,” said Morley.
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When the time came to move from the cramped South Melbourne premises, the company took the innovative approach of getting Eurografica, a division of MAN Roland, to design a custom-built facility. Best known here for its design of the Fairfax newspaper plant at Tullamaraine, Eurografica sent one of its designers to study the company’s requirements and came up with a design to enhance workflow and productivity. The result is the first commercial sheetfed greenfield site designed by the company in Australia.