Page 14 - Print21 March-April 2020

Leading Article
Where the going gets tough
Droughts, fires and floods have devastated huge swathes of Australia. The human cost is immeasurable. The grit and determination on nightly display in the television news gives new resonance to the term ‘battler’. Starting over is never easy when everything you’ve worked for is gone.
Sydney Street, Marrickville, is an industrial thoroughfare lined with panel beaters, timber yards, security outfits and sheet metal factories.
It’s also home to Imagination Graphics, the printing works owned and run by Emmanuel ‘Budgie’ Buhagiar. I’ve known this ‘little Aussie battler’ through most of the 20 tough years he worked to grow his business. A couple of years ago he moved back into his ‘lucky’ building at #33 Sydney Street, lucky because owners, Ian and Tony Stass, of Stass Printing had backed him when he made the move into platemaking.
Last year he bought them out and in a show of confidence in the future invested in NSW's first Accurio KM1 B2 digital inkjet press, the epitome of new, gleaming, print technology.
The weekend of 8 February saw him putting in long hours at the shop as usual, getting a head start on the week’s paperwork while the KM1 pumped out colour brochures for one of his top clients. He was last to leave, well satisfied with the day’s work. Monday morning at 5.00am he got a call from the first staff to arrive telling him to ‘get in here quick'. When he turned into
the street the water was over a metre deep, swamping the car wheels. Pallets were
floating down the driveway. The print room was under water, the drains in the back lane were blocking up, everything was gone; it was a wipeout!
The deluge that drenched Sydney filled the water storage dams and bucketed over 391.6 mm (15.42 inches) of rain over a four-day stretch, more than three times the normal amount for the month of February. It turned Sydney Street and the factory floor of Imagination Graphics into a lake. All the print was ruined; all the presses, including the new KM1, were ruined; all
the platemaking gear was ruined.
Unprecedented is a word that’s been overworked this year, but Budgie tells me the street had never flooded like this in over 30 years.
So now what? We’ve grown accustomed to seeing shell shocked survivors standing in the midst of burnt out homes vowing
to ‘rebuild', to start over again. But it’s not easy and it’s not simple. You can’t go back, no matter how hard you try. Even if you rebuild on the blackened block it’ll never be the same, it’s a different house, a new and different life.
Starting over is not some option; the days, months, and years keep coming, like it or not. They have to be lived through and the
emotional price must be paid. Rebuilding is a choice, but it’s not something everyone will do. Sometimes people simply walk away.
Budgie had Imagination Graphics in tiptop shape; it had to be in order to acquire the Accurio KM1 from Konica Minolta. Records were up to date, the business plan detailed the future, importantly, insurance reflected the real ongoing business. So assuming the insurers do the right thing, he’ll be OK for money.
But there’s more to it than that. This
is climate change; the insurers will take a long hard look at Sydney Street, next year the same flood may come back again. Then there’s the sheer effort of getting everything back up and running while keeping customers happy. Printing is a tough competitive business and while Budgie has to trust other printers to do the right thing now in order to meet deadlines, how long does that go on for?
He tells me he’ll start again and there’s no doubting his courage. It's a choice he has to make but it’ll be a long, hard slog, and it won’t ever be the same as before. 21
Patrick Howard
— Editor-at-large
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