Page 13 - Print 21 Magazine Sep-Oct 2021

Printer Profile
to one another’s strengths, it’s a sure winning formula. So it is with Michael and Shaun McDiarmid. Neither has a trade background
– they are printers by virtue of business acumen, commitment and common sense. After surviving last year’s Covid shutdown, they are regaining lost ground with a well- founded confidence.
According to Michael, a lot was learned from the slowdown. It highlighted some surprising areas of strength and weakness. For instance, the difference between offset and digital was brought into sharp relief.
“Digital died last year as the restaurants closed, people weren’t going out or getting married. Offset kept us going. Charities increased their use. They had to find new ways of getting their message out. Print is very versatile,” he said.
The company used to work double shifts before the pandemic but no more. Now it’s five days a week, seven to three and no weekends either. “It’s better for us. We’re smaller now and the volumes are not huge. I’ve always said we’re a boutique printer.” Although Emerald was an early adopter of digital, its history is with offset. Beginning when he rescued
an Itek single-colour press and a guillotine from the administration of
his father’s small printing business in the 1980s, it was Michael’s determination to have a go that brought the business into being. Brother Shaun came on board soon after, initially only as a stopgap
to make some money for a trip to Europe. “I only came for two weeks and stayed thirty years,” he laughs. On his return the two of them, in Michael’s words, “put our heads down andbumsuptomakeagoofit.”
“We began with a couple of single-colour Iteks on which we’d print, number and perforate without knowing much about it. We had a shop that fronted onto the Old Northern Road, with a few parking slots outside. It was a convenient location and word spread through a network of friends.
“There was a lot of walk-in business, passing trade. We were competing with a big Snap franchise just down the road. People would park outside, walk up to the Snap and get a quote. But they’d drop in on their way back and I’d tell them, ‘I can beat that’.”
At the time it was mostly black and white printing, and when anything more complicated was required, such as numbering or a very large job, they’d outsource to local printers. Soon there was trade work coming back in.
“And slowly, slowly, you think, ‘okay, I can do this. I know how that works.’ Then we're starting to get some momentum and soon we move to a little factory in Salisbury. We ended up having three artists and a couple of printers. We did everything. I was working from eight to eleven every day. It was hard but we got through it. We grew organically, never took over anybody.”
A blast from the past came with the arrival one day of Ronnie White, an erstwhile partner of their dad. He was working for David Currie as a salesman and following an introduction, Emerald bought its first Fuji 52 from Currie Group in the early 1990s. It
was the beginning of an important relationship the brothers are happy to recognise as key to their success.
“Our customers were starting
to grow so we had to keep up with them. We were sending out a lot of colour work so, okay let’s explore that. We went to colour with two Fuji two-colour presses side by side. We’d do two colours on one, then put the other two colours down on the second press, which is not the best but we were pretty good at it. We got it right. And at that stage a four- colour press was outside the realms of possibility,” said Michael.
Even then stage the ethos of the company was to keep as much of
the work in-house as possible. Apart from investing in more finishing equipment, they moved upstream to take in design and typesetting. “We used to outsource our artwork and typesetting, but half the time it was coming back wrong. By then Macs were coming in, so we decided to buy one and bring the artwork in-house.”
“Customers know they’re dealing direct with the owners. We don't hold any airs or graces. The buck stops with us.” – Michael McDiarmid
It was a fateful decision and one that has resonated with Emerald ever since. For a company of its size, it defies the reasoning that it’s important to specialise in one area and outsource everything else. The only work being outsourced when
I was there was an order for inline carton gluing. Specialised packaging is an important component of the Emerald mix, with die-cutting and embellishment a normal part of
the operation. A hot metal foiling platen as well as a Scodix digital embellishing press add value to a
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