It’s not every day a company is singled out and given a lifeline to boost its market share.
For the Victorian locally owned and run printing company, PMI Imageworks, a $2.6 million government grant will see the company venture into new territory and become one of Australia and the world’s leading digital printing companies.
Already running on around 40,000 individual orders a day, the commercial printing company hopes to boost that up to 60,000 a day and boost its staff from a modest 30 to more than 110.
Founder and CEO Chris Zapris has seen his company grow and expand from its humble beginnings in 1998.
Picking up the trade in his father’s general commercial printing business, a young 21-year-old Zapris ventured out by himself and entered the world of digital printing, an industry that was in its infancy.
His clients would bring him the usual – business cards, brochures, postcards – but in the past two years the company has expanded its online market.
“We are a wholesaler to some of the world’s biggest online brands,” Mr Zapris tells Neos Kosmos.
Think Ebay, Amazon, Etsy; big brands that need a wholesaler to print their products. PMI doesn’t just print a whole batch of, say, novelty mugs, it performs thousands of individual orders.
Asking him what the most popular printed item is for PMI, Mr Zapris says photobooks. Thousands upon thousands of photobooks are printed daily from people entering their wedding or travel photos, whatever they might be, and buying the book through an online retailer. Online competitors are reduced to bedfellows at the printer in Fitzroy, printing out side by side.
“We’re not producing large volumes of one order, what we’re doing is producing orders to the unit of one,” he says.
“In the last 2 years, we developed a new business speciallising in the direct to consumer space. So now there are no more pdfs, consumers typically order products online from a website or from a smartphone, so they’re creating the product themselves, so that order is directly sent to our plant for production.”
Touring the warehouse in Brunswick two weeks ago, Victorian Premier Denis Napthine said the company had some of the world’s best technology and was in an industry growth area.
“PMI is a leader in this hi-tech industry and a company with a lean structure and flexible production techniques to enable tight turnaround times.
“These new investments in manufacturing show just how capable Victoria is when it comes to driving innovation in advanced manufacturing and services.”
Its growing market share in the world is something that will put Australia on the map, says Senator Bridget McKenzie. “UK and US market in this type of product is already quite well-developed and the company has significant customers in those two nations, but seeking to not only grow their global base and opportunities but to take advantage of the unmet demand here at home,” she said.
Both skilled and unskilled jobs will become available at PMI, and the company expects an increase in sales fivefold by 2018.