Page 37 - Print21 Nov-Dec 2019

Commercial Printing
to be set up above the print shop.
“I went to Ian and Tony Staas and said, ‘Look, you guys are placing a
lot of artwork and film with me. I’ve also got a couple of other clients. We should buy our own imagesetter. And I’ll get another partner to run it.’ “
The other partner was Matt Pattinson, a gun, who operated the imagesetter. With Buhagiar handling sales, the business took off. The newly named Imagination Graphics supplied film to print companies such as McDonald Masterton, John Fisher, Concord, as well as many others, large and small. It was innovative technology and to this day he has nothing but praise for the Agfa filmsetter. “It was invincible. We ran it night and day for years, in three shifts. It was good machinery. We ended up having about 12 employees over three shifts.”
Stepping up a grade
Alert to the change as printing companies began to take imagesetting in-house, the next
step for Imagination Graphics was a Heidelberg Trendsetter. It meant the business had to move out of the ‘lucky building’ to new premises. Even now, printing plates are still a vital part of the business – unlike the filmsetter, which was retired three years ago.
“The film business died out. No one was ordering it except for the occasional client such as Goldcraft. I keep the plate business going. We
make plates with the promise that any printer can use them, they’ll always run and the quality is good. With print management work we impose the finished product and provide a contract proof along with the plates. It’s maybe twenty to thirty percent of the business now.”
For most of its history Imagination Graphics was strictly
a design and prepress house – print managing for clients, providing film and plates, but outsourcing all printing. That changed with the arrival of the first Konica Minolta bizhub 6501 in 2008, another joint venture with Ian Staas. That’s when Imagination Graphics changed to become a digital printing company.
Since that initial investment Buhagiar has remained a loyal supporter of Konia Minolta. “The quality was always sensational, it was reliable and the KM team gave me great backup.
“Before we bought the first Konica Minolta about 10 years ago, I went to the staff and said, ‘Look, prepress is dying. It’s closing down. I want
to morph into a small digital print company, and we’re going to get a couple of digital presses. Are you guys happy to run them?’ And they just said, ‘Yeah, boss.’
“In digital printing what you need is knowledge of colour and how to fix files. I think that’s half of the reason our quality is so good. These guys know colour, and if it’s not right at the machine then they’ll go to the
Main
Winning partnership: Emmanuel and Colleen Buhagiar
at their Marrickville factory
Above
Do you want fries with that: Emmanuel serves up at the barbie
to David Cascarino, industrial manager at Konica Minolta
file and nudge the cyan up or bring down the magenta. And then start printing again.”
But building a printing business was never going to be easy. Buhagiar hit the streets, door knocking, phoning up mates in corporate positions, promoting short run digital colour in the early years of the century. Again, he was on the right side of history. Commercial printers were fielding growing demands
from their customers for short run, on-demand print jobs, which did
not easily fit into their workflows.
It was a sweet spot for Imagination Graphics, and allowed him to retain more of the print work he was managing for clients. “I went out of my way to service clients, over- service them, nothing is too much trouble, which they know.
Right
Destined for greatness: Imagination Graphics apprentice, Matt Zunic not only gets to
cut his teeth operating Heidelberg GTOs, but he
is also in line to operate the latest in digital presses, the Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1
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