Page 20 - Print21 Nov-Dec 2019

Textile Printing
Jake Nelson
Digital to the rescue
When fabric printing business Mereton Textiles was in danger of collapsing under the weight of its unprofitable gravure arm as well as the impact of the GFC, owners Joe and Bindi Aliano bet the farm on digital – and won. Today it’s a thriving operation, and digital printing, with Mutoh now providing the core of its production capacity, has played a big part in its success, as Jake Nelson discovered.
Located in Penrith in Sydney’s west, near the foot of the Blue Mountains, it’s hard to tell – with its warehouse full of stock and its humming
digital printers – that just over a decade ago, Mereton Textiles, which produces dye sublimation printed fabric for soft furnishings, décor, fashion, and swimwear, was under threat of losing its business.
Yet according to its owner,
the irrepressible Joe Aliano, the family-owned textile company was unable to keep its head above water during the GFC period and under the old business model of importing large quantities of gravure-printed transfer paper from overseas.
“The gravure side of the business was killing us,” he tells Print21. “We had to order minimum quantities, and to cut a long story short, like anything, it was Murphy’s Law – you would always have excess stock of the colours and designs that clients
didn’t want, and not enough of what they did want.”
It was at this point that Aliano decided the company needed to change its business model and adopt a new approach where stock became minimal and options became plentiful.
“It was literally a case of having to spend money to make money,” he reminisces.
From 14 to three
In 2010 and with digital on the rise, Aliano invested in new machines to start pumping out digitally-printed transfer paper – but soon found himself looking for a solution that could improve efficiency and consistency.
“Back then the volumes weren’t what we’re talking about now: these machines were doing anywhere from twelve metres an hour to thirty metres; they were four-pass printers with single heads.
“Then you have to consider consistency – and with fourteen machines it’s a much harder task to control the consistency, as all machines have their own idiosyncrasies,” he says.
In 2017, Aliano added the first 1.9-metre wide, four-head Mutoh ValueJet 1948WX, a flagship in the manufacturer’s dye sublimation range. According to Russell Cavenagh, general manager of Mutoh Australia, the machine is a real workhorse.
“It can handle rolls of paper up
to a hundred kilos, so when you’re banging out ten thousand square metres per week of production, that’s a little bit more than a thirty-metre- long roll just sitting there. You’re putting some serious paper on and off those machines.
“Sometimes these machines are getting pushed for eighteen hours
a day, and that’s what Mutohs are designed for. They’re designed to just run and run and run. It may not be visible from the outside, but there’s
a lot of technology under the hood
to get a print head sliding back and forth, putting down billions of drops of ink in the same place eighteen hours a day with paper screaming through,” says Cavenagh.
Aliano loved the Mutoh VJ- 1948WX so much he bought a second – and then a third, eventually replacing almost all the 14 machines the company had used previously.
“It’s amazing how different it
is today: we’ve got three Mutoh printers, and we’re producing about six and a half thousand linear metres a week. In the past, we weren’t producing that much on fourteen machines,” he says, adding that there have been other benefits
20 Print21 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019