Snap Printing banks on digital
Snap Printing O'Connell Street enters a new market as customers jump at the availability of around-the-clock printing.
With a fleet of digital printing technology - onsite and at client sites - Snap Printing O'Connell Street has invested its way from a successful print shop to an extensive and versatile print provider, serving leading brands within the financial industry.
Snap Printing O'Connell Street takes a step up
Owners and former mining engineers, Rohan Erwin and Mike Palmer, became tired of travelling and working in isolated locations removed from the infrastructure and sophistication of capital cities. They were looking for an alternative business venture, and a printing business located in central-Sydney turned out to be exactly the opportunity they had in mind.
(Simon Lane of Fuji Xerox Australia with Rohan Erwin and John Budgen from Snap Printing O'Connell Street)
Since taking over Snap Printing O'Connell Street in 2003, Erwin and Palmer have built the company from a competent print shop to a trail-blazing commercial, high-volume print operation employing 32 people. A recently appointed third director, John Budgen, is dedicated to seeking and securing new sales and works alongside the rest of the team that is comprised of graphic designers, DTP professionals, digital printing specialists, production and finishing managers and dedicated in-plant operators that work externally at client sites.
Clients predominantly hail from the finance industry, and its core work involves producing booklets, marketing and promotional materials, training manuals and annual reports. “We have turned quick turnaround, short run printing into a fine art,” says Rohan.
A new challenge
In June 2006, Snap Franchising Limited worked with SNAP O'Connell Street to win two major contracts to provide all digital printing for two leading Australian financial institutions. For one of the banks, Snap Printing O'Connell Street was also awarded the role of NSW print coordinator, responsible for the production, distribution and on-time delivery of all printed matter with other print centres throughout Australia.
Because of the major influx in activity that ensued, Snap Printing needed to invest in new high-speed digital production solutions to accommodate the work from new and existing customers.
The digital solution
Adding to its existing fleet of Xerox DocuColor 6060, Xerox DocuColor 2060 and Xerox Nuvera 120 printers, Snap Printing O'Connell Street invested in:
Owners and former mining engineers, Rohan Erwin and Mike Palmer, became tired of travelling and working in isolated locations removed from the infrastructure and sophistication of capital cities. They were looking for an alternative business venture, and a printing business located in central-Sydney turned out to be exactly the opportunity they had in mind. 
“We already had a good relationship with Fuji Xerox Australia,” says Erwin. “They offered us reliable technology and attentive customer support in the past and we believe Xerox colour technology to be currently the best on the market.
“Fuji Xerox helped us to identify solutions that suited both our needs for equipment that gave our customers the best possible printing, as well as meeting our budgetary requirements. Fuji Xerox worked with us to achieve our goals.”
As part of one of the contracts and in conjunction with Snap Franchising Limited, Snap Printing O'Connell Street also established a joint venture with the incumbent offset print provider of one of the banks. The united companies developed and now successfully manage an in-house print room at the bank's Sydney head office. The DocuTech 6180, DocuColor 6060 (relocated from O'Connell Street), DocuColor 5065, FX4110 and FreeFlow Makeready handle all the requirements of an in-plant facility as they roll out marketing materials, booklets, product information folders, training materials and reports.
“This, the first Snap Printing in-plant operation, required an innovative approach from Snap Printing and Snap Franchising,” said Simon Lane, business manager of strategic accounts at Fuji Xerox Australia. “The joint venture was a perfect example of digital and traditional printing complementing one another to optimise capacity, value and performance.”
The joint venture was established very quickly and with print work due to commence immediately, the Fuji Xerox team worked through the night to install the equipment into the bank's high-security document production environment. The entire site had to be up and running within a few days.
Bringing the benefits
The Xerox iGen3 produced a staggering 1.2 million impressions in the first six weeks after installation and as clients continued to increase their orders for high quality printing on short deadlines, Snap Printing O'Connell Street made significant changes to meet the demand.
“Coinciding with the installation of the iGen3 and 6180's, we have employed 12 new employees and established a night shift for the first time,” says Erwin. “The iGen3 runs for 20 hours, four days per week to provide our clients with lightning fast turnaround and consistently excellent colour-quality output on what seems like a never-ending stream of work.”
"The iGen3 and 6180 are workhorses and have slotted into our already heavily digital operations with relative ease. We are now able to produce high quality books and brochures in colour and black and white, where previously, this would have required spending many more hours at higher cost to the customer to achieve the same results."
“In fact, we recently accepted a job from a financial institution to produce over 20,000 annual reports of numerous kinds within a very tight timeframe. Before the iGen3 and 6180's, it would not have been possible to meet the deadline while continuing to serve our other clients.”
About Fuji Xerox Australia (FXA) Production Services Business Group (PSBG)
FXA PSBG continues to lead the way, helping organisations capitalise on the dynamic world of digital printing, on-demand publishing and one-to-one personalised communications. These advanced capabilities are enabled by our workflow solutions, business development services and breakthrough technologies. For further information on Fuji Xerox, please visit www.fujixerox.com.au.