Page 26 - Print21 November-December 2022

Inkjet Printing
Serengeti migrates to inkjet
From a farm in Zimbabwe to one of Australia’s most advanced printshops, complete with sheetfed B2 inkjet Fujifilm Jetpress, it’s been quite a journey for the Games family. Wayne Robinson reports.
the country’s economy with it. Zimbabwe went from being a net exporter of food to a net importer within two years.
For Richard Games, having to start from scratch in mid-life was both a challenge and an opportunity. Leaving behind your entire history is far from easy, but the self-reliance, problem solving and determination that make a successful farmer translate well to new fields.
Games chose Australia as the family’s new base, moved to the garden city of Toowoomba, set high on the ridge west of Brisbane, and in 2004 bought an old suburban photocopying business that was closing down. The business had been going for 22 years, but was suffering a lack of investment in the years prior to Games buying it. It was actually the first pay-for-print business in Toowoomba and using the first Xerox for that purpose.
It wasn’t until he had resurrected the business a year or so later that Games first sat down and had a good hard look at the business. He says, “The majority of the machines were pretty old and decrepit. I had to make a decision whether I should walk away, or borrow some money and buy new equipment.” He opted for the latter, and the business has not looked back since.
His son, Warren, at the time was working on the oil rigs doing two weeks on two weeks off, and he would spend a fair bit of his off time in the shop, eventually deciding to join,
and help grow the business. That was 11 years ago in 2011, fast forward to 2017, photocopying was diminishing and becoming unviable, while actual printing was increasing. The company changed its name to Serengeti Print Group, in homage to the Games’ homeland.
Games says, “We don't come from the Serengeti. But we felt that more people knew about the Serengeti because of the migration that happens every year, and we migrated as well. So it worked.”
The rebrand was driven by the changing nature of the business, and the need to change perceptions in the market. Games says, “A lot of the customers who we did photocopying for would then go somewhere else to get their printing done, when we had the capability to do that.”
The big political events around the world that we hear about on the news inevitably have a human consequence. Australia is
full of people who have been forced into difficult decisions through those events, and moved across the world to these fair shores to start again.
So it is for the Games family from Zimbabwe, whose farm was
Above
Serving the market: (l-r) Richard and Warren Games, Serengeti Print
‘acquired’ by the government as part of the so-called Land Redistribution Program, which essentially meant taking a productive viable business, which employed and housed a large number of people, and turning it into a derelict property, all coming from the decree of former president Robert Mugabe. Games’ farm, and hundreds of others that faced the same fate, was quickly ruined, and
26 Print21 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022