Page 50 - Print21 Nov-Dec 2019

Digital Finishing
Spot UV solution is diamond standard for Emerald
Sydney-based digital and offset printer Emerald Press had a big problem to
solve: providing high-quality spot UV without having to deal with the troubles
of outsourcing. Fortunately, long-time partner Currie Group had just what Emerald needed, as Jake Nelson discovered.
Located in Castle Hill in Sydney’s north, Emerald Press provides digital and offset printing services for a range of applications
including packaging, commercial, wide-format, and point of sale. According to Kewyn Gold, sales manager, Emerald isn’t in the business of providing “cookie- cutter” solutions.
“I think we cover all bases from commodity printing right through to specialty one-off jobs. We give people what they want, and we will tailor make it because we’ve got everything internally. We have the ability to do premium short-run work or runs of tens of thousands,” he says.
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Shaun McDiarmid, director, says that he and his brother Michael went into business together as offset printers 30 years ago – but saw opportunities in digital.
“We were early pioneers in digital; however, it was only small because of the quality available – it wasn’t really a huge focus. We did see the benefits of it, but always came back to offset due to the quality issues. That obviously is different now.
“We’ve been in the more specialty side of digital printing since HP Indigo came on the scene properly, and was able to produce the quality that we were happy to do for corporates – that’s when it really took off. It was all about being able to offer an alternative to offset that wasn’t inferior in quality,” he says.
Outsourcing headache
According to Gold, a major pain point for Emerald Press came about when asked for UV embellishments – as the company had to outsource, this meant being at the mercy of schedule
problems with both the trade finishers and the couriers.
“Being a small to medium sized business and offering that service to other print companies, we do understand that, when dealing with the bigger guys that are offering these kind of embellishment processes, you can just be pushed to the back of the queue.
“We were finding at one stage that – and this is a lot of the reason why we internalised it – you’d book a job in and you’d just become part of the process, and a lot of the times you get let down by a day or two.
“Even though that’s out of your control, your clients still perceive that as being your issue, and it’s really difficult to kind of negotiate on those terms and reassure people that things will be done on time when it’s really is outside of your control,” he says.
Enter Currie Group and the Scodix S75. The B2-sized digital enhancement press ticked all the boxes that Emerald was looking for, says McDiarmid.