Page 18 - Print21 March-April 2020

People in print
He takes the challenge of the internet in his stride. He is firmly of the opinion that no new technology has ever killed off other media.
“On-line shopping shifts the place where transactions occur,
but the principles of retail hold. Nothing delivers for retailers better than a well-conceived catalogue delivered to a large and relevant segment. Even online retailers like eBay and Amazon are now doing catalogues.”
Magazines doing OK
If catalogues are a growth sector, magazines, Ovato’s other main printing product, have their challenges. While consumer magazines decline and capture headlines with closures of well-known and iconic titles, a revolution in custom publishing titles is firing.
“Consumer magazines are doing
it quite tough. There's a degree
in deterioration from Bauer and Pacific, but what has exacerbated the problem is the lack of publications from News Corp and Nine Entertainment. They’ve disappeared or turned them into coldset or are printing them as part of newspapers.
“We’re publishing magazines
at a new level now, still very successfully. Look at the food magazine category, the homemaker category. They’re rock solid, carrying pages of ads.
“Custom publishing generally is doing well. Look at the Qantas and Virgin magazines. They’ve got a captive audience; you get on an aircraft, flick through it, you might see a holiday in Vietnam,
18 Print21 MARCH/APRIL 2020
Above
Ovato board and executives with visitors at the Warwick Farm launch: (from left to right) Andrew McMaster – non-executive director, Ovato; Dhun Karai – non- executive director, Ovato; Scott Glynn Farlow MLC; Kevin Slaven – CEO, Ovato; Michael Hannan – chairman, Ovato; Mark Muller – editor in chief, R.M. Williams; and Craig Dunsford – executive general manager, Print Australia, Ovato
Retail catalogues: prime customers to buy
or on the Gold Coast, you hope to do the crossword but someone has beaten you to it. They’re fabulous magazines, the readership is enormous.
“I’ve stayed closer to magazine publishing than most printers
in terms of what’s working and what’s not. I look at the number of food mags; it’s never been higher. Everyone will say they’re not selling as many as they used to. Well, of course they’re not. All of these came about in the last ten to fifteen years and a lot came because of
our development. It’s a really solid category, full of interest.”
He recalls his first engagement in the sector when Hannanprint began printing Fairfax work, including Woman’s Day, a million copies a week, often with 160 pages per issue at the time.
“We also became the printer for Good Weekend when it launched in 1985 with over 800,000 copies each week. We won Readers Digest and the Myer catalogue account, which we still do. We then picked up Open Road for the NRMA and we still print it.
“It’s fair to say the period between 1983 and 1986 was frantic, exhilarating, sometimes exhausting but immensely rewarding.
“To give some perspective, we had made a $14m commitment, which back in those days was a lot of money, to gear up with three new heatset presses.
“There was a lot of building work as well, press room, paper stores
and bindery equipment as well, all proceeding from an unshakable belief that we could be successful if we had the equipment. ‘Build it and they will come.’ Well, they did.”
Printing has influence
There is grim humour in Hannan’s regard of the latest ACCC involvement in print and publishing. As a veteran of an adverse ruling against his original bid to merge with PMP in the early years of the century, he wryly castigates the competition watchdog for its over eager interest in the printing and publishing sector. The current delay in approving the Bauer and Pacific Magazines merger is a case in point.
“I'm amazed at how interested the ACCC seems to be in the printing and publishing industry. Printing must have a lot of influence. The delay is not helpful to either business or the publishing sector generally.
“If the ACCC doesn’t approve it,
in a warped sort of way, it suggests the print sector is much stronger and more influential than we give it credit for. It’s saying that Google and Facebook and Instagram and all the other stuff aren’t as influential as we think they are. For the ACCC not to pass this is really a tick in the box for print publishing. They obviously think printing and publishing has more influence than the people who work in it do.
“When we did the merger
the ACCC delayed it by three to
four months. A lot of the plant rationalisation and equipment removal and relocation was meant
to happen in the quiet time of December, January, and early February. We ended up having to embark on a very disruptive plan in the busiest time of the year. That was a significant blow to our plans, but in the end, we still finished the process two or three months earlier than originally planned.”
Above right