Page 20 - Print 21 Magazine May-June 2019

PacPrint 2002
Whenever the subject of David Currie’s success comes up in industry talk, someone will invariably say that ‘he was very lucky’. What they usually mean is that Currie & Co got the
HP Indigo agency. There’s some truth there, but it’s far from the whole story. At the turn of the century, digital printing and the Israeli Indigo brand
were far from a ‘done deal’. There was a lot of scepticism that digital would ever match offset for quality. The Landa press agency in Australia was operated by a Toyo Ink subsidiary, ODIS, that couldn’t reach the wider print community. Landa recognised that the Currie A3 customer base was the market they needed.
However, the deal required not only a leap of faith on behalf of David Currie, but also significant financial investment. Backing his own judgement, he sold the company’s original building to finance buying all the ODIS stock of presses. Once again he was instrumental in making his own luck. Soon afterwards, HP stepped in to buy Indigo, investing the hundreds of millions over the years to make the technology a viable printing process
Currie Group and HP Indigo
have gone on to forge one of the most successful partnerships in the industry. The brand has become the premier digital solution expanding from commercial printing into labels and packaging, where it enjoys an even greater market share.
Despite the overwhelming HP Indigo success Currie Group still has a vibrant business outside its digital destiny. David Currie emits an air
of quiet satisfaction that the whole world hasn’t gone digital.
“Our good customers run both digital and offset. I’ve still got two customers in our top ten that don’t have digital. But they do buy seventy to eighty thousand dollars a month in consumables. When I review our top one hundred customers, which I do on a regular basis, more and more of them have both a good versatile offset press and a couple of digitals. I think that’s a pretty good structure for a printing business.”
There is a no nonsense air about David Currie. He doesn’t fit into any conventional mould. In my opinion, that makes him an Australian original. It’s been my privilege to know and write about him for nearly 30 years. Humbling to realise he was an industry veteran long before we met.
He tells me, “It’s simple, if you do more things right than wrong you should survive.”
His son, Will Currie, is now in the business as account manager in NSW. You just know it gives David no end
of satisfaction. He is always first to recognise the founding achievements of his own father, William ‘Bill’ Currie.
Currie Group seems likely to prove an enduring dynasty. 21
A strong tradition of print engineering has evolved into the high-tech Currie Care Centre (above), which remotely services printers across the region.
A line-up of market-leading brands (below) ensures that Currie Group continues to provide complete solutions to a broad range of Australian and New Zealand printers.
20 Print21 MAY/JUNE 2019