The game’s afoot! Commonwealth Games Print opportunities – News Commentary by Andy McCourt
The closing ceremony is pictured, featuring taxi cabs adorned with graphics promoting the Melbourne games.
On February 10, Prime Minister John Howard unveiled the high-tech Koori-style ‘Message Stick’ baton (below) that will carry the Queen’s message to 71 nations in a 180,000 km, one-year journey commencing from London on March 14. Inside the baton are two cameras, a microphone, a GPS tracking system and data storage.
Printing, signage and merchandising contracts for the 2006 Commonwealth Games will be awarded through a tender process, and the time to register interest is right now!
By registering your organisation on www.melbourne2006.com.au (click Tenders); you can
view Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games opportunities
The closing ceremony is pictured, featuring taxi cabs adorned with graphics promoting the Melbourne games.
Printing, signage and merchandising contracts for the 2006 Commonwealth Games will be awarded through a tender process, and the time to register interest is right now! nominate your industry categories of interest
be alerted by email to opportunities that match your nominated categories
download tender documents and further information
manage your organisation profile
be registered with Industry Capability Network for other supply opportunities.
This is the largest event in Melbourne since the 1956 Olympics and the print opportunities are huge. Screen and Digital Large Format printers can tender for signage, tee-shirts, apparel, flags, banners, vehicle graphics, posters and other merchandise. Flexo printers can tender for plastic and paper bags, boxes and packaging. Offset printers can pitch for tickets, programmes, souvenir books and brochures. Many large Games sponsor corporations will also add specially branded products to their ranges.
Following the printing disappointments of the Sydney Olympics (see My Call), Melbourne 2006 is an opportunity to keep most of the printing contracts within Australia where they belong.
MY CALL
Get in there now and tender!
Make waves that all Commonwealth Games printing contracts should be awarded to local printers. We don’t want a repeat of Sydney 2000 where 11 million tickets were printed in the USA, and then they would not fit the turnstiles!
In May 2000, Olympics Minister Michael Knight told the NSW Parliament about two "unintended consequences" of making a "fundamental error in adopting the Atlanta model of Olympic ticketing." Neither were the tickets barcoded, which meant they could not be scanned. However the problem was resolved, it was kept very quiet, but the tickets still came from the US.
The second big print disappointment of Sydney 2000 was Diamond Press’s bankruptcy just months after winning the contract to print the Olympic programme (Archive search “Diamond Press”). You would think a blue-chip job like that would make sufficient profit to tide a firm over the inevitable post-Olympic downturn but disaster struck just six months after the athletes left Sydney. Some industry insiders blame the ‘creative financing’ deal for Diamond’s web presses and there could be a cautionary tale here, echoed here last week by MAN Roland’s ceo (USA) Yves Rogivue.
The lesson may be, don’t use creative capital financing to win jobs by discounting excessively. It’ll catch up with you, and all the other unfortunates caught in your web of debt.
If we make the same mistakes twice, we are found wanting. Australian content should be an influencing factor in the tendering process. If it is not we may find that PMCs and Australian-based representatives of offshore printers may win tenders and ship the jobs overseas.
The terms of the Games tendering process will have a great deal to do with whether the jobs stay in Australia or not, and by registering your organisation on www.melbourne2006.com.au, you will at least have the opportunity to influence these terms.