Nova Press gets a Cracker of a merger for Christmas
Nova Press has expanded in its short few years of operation to become one of the Gold Coast’s largest printers, specialising in offset print for the trade, while Cracker Print and Paper set up shop in September last year as a commercial printer focussing solely on digital work.
Chad Lemming, director of Nova Press (pictured below), and Grant McDonald, director of Cracker Print and Paper, reached the decision earlier this year to merge their two businesses to form a commercial print house equally proficient in long-run offset and short-run digital. The partners are currently in the process of executing their plans to bring the two companies together.
The two companies will continue to operate out of separate premises until the Christmas break, at which point the equipment in Cracker Print’s shopfront in Hope Island, which includes a freshly purchased HP Indigo 3050, will be shifted over to the Nova Press factory in Burleigh Heads.
Additional factory space has been purchased next door to Nova Press, boosting the business’s footprint by an additional 1,000 square metres. The finishing equipment currently utilised by Nova will be shifted into the new space, while Cracker Print’s digital equipment will be moved in to run alongside the existing four and five-colour Shinohara offset machines in the pressroom.
The new business entity will continue to trade under the name Nova Press, and it has been confirmed it will remain an exclusive supplier for the trade. Lemming says the merger will bestow the business a broader spectrum of capabilities, allowing it to offer a wider range of services to its customers.
“Nova Press couldn’t offer digital before, but now we have the HP Indigo 3050 on board we’ve extended our capabilities even further. We can now offer our offset customers the option of short-run jobs, while Cracker customers will now have the economical choice of long-run jobs.”
Lemming believes he has found a great business partner in Grant McDonald. “I know we both share the same mindset – we’re aggressive and we don’t mind getting in and having a go. And we have some hot new ideas coming up that will allow us to push the business forward even further,” he says.
Lemming predicts that the machinery from both businesses will be running at full capacity once the merger is complete. “The presses at both companies are already running off the hook, and we predict a smooth transition.”