Labels is one market that has paid dividends for Snap Eastwood in Sydney and the new AveryPro range has proven to be the perfect match for its Fuji Xerox Color 1000i.
“It’s not a label boom, but we print a fair few of them," says director Jason O’Connor. "We get some requests for labels on rolls with orders up to 300,000 or 400,000 printed offset. That sort of order would be about 30% of our label work. The rest is digital work."
Snap Eastwood used new AveryPro labels in A3 sheet size and found their quality and performance outstanding.
“For longer runs the A3 size makes a difference,” O'Connor says. “The good thing is you don’t have to change all your spec sizes and it saves wear and tear on the rollers. In the past we’ve done 100,000 and 200,000 runs of labels on the digital press, and that’s where A3 will come into its own — we won’t have to run A4 sheets and it will halve the clicks."
O’Connor has always been an early adopter of new technology and an avid participant in specialist markets.
“I’ve worked in the industry for about 24 years now, and we bought the company about nine years ago through a management buyout. Since then we’ve grown the business, even through the GFC. That was against the trend — we employed a couple of salespeople rather than got rid of them, and it paid off for us.
“We’ve seen growth over the past few years. Our bread and butter is short-run, short turnaround digital jobs. In the old days, customers wanted it in one or two days; now it’s one or two hours! That’s where it’s heading. We were 70% offset and 30% digital, but it’s the reverse now.”
Snap Eastwood recently installed a new Fuji Xerox Color 1000i digital press — one of the first in the country to do so, in line with O'Connor’s drive for new business growth.
“It gives us the ability to do gold and silver— which is terrific, it looks just like offset — and provides a different offering. We like to take on the too-hard-basket stuff. Our guys very rarely say 'no' to anything, so we take it on and come up with a solution. That sets us apart from the crowd.
“I think there will be a huge amount of growth in personalisation in the future," he says. "There will also definitely be growth in the label market, and we’re ready for it.”