Rotary Offset Press is celebrating its golden jubilee with a return to core values and in the company of a grand lady… a 25-year-old G14 web which is unusual among much heatset kit installed in the local market in that it’s paid for.
The press – Baker Perkins’ answer to the Harris M-1000 – was acquired from a printer in Virginia, USA, in 1999 and installed the following year.
And the Sydney printing company will probably buy secondhand again: Sales and marketing director David Holihan says the company has approved plans for an extension to its Homebush factory and has started looking for a second heatset press. “It’ll probably 32 or 48pp quarto and five to ten years old,” he says.
Careful plant acquisitions have been a key to the growth of the business which began when determined but impecunious young migrant Stan Tarasov – an offset printer at S.T. Leigh in Kensington – put a deal together with Gollins in 1958 to rent an old ATF Chief 24 sheetfed offset press for £5-a-week. Within two days of the press being installed in an old store in Glebe, he had won his first job, printing a Greek newspaper.
The buzz about “reasonably priced” web-offset presses encouraged him to put his name down for one of the first Goss Community presses in the country, and the company moved to bigger premises at Taylor Square in preparation for its 1964 installation. A couple of years later, the two-unit single-width press was doubled in capacity when, against advice, Tarasov bought and rebuilt a similar press which had been ‘written-off’ in a fire at a Blacktown printworks.
“Every new job proved a challenge for him, working day and night, seven days a week, but he strongly believed in a core value of ‘success through service’,” says Holihan.
The result was a thriving business: And as new publications came in doors, new equipment was added including sheetfed, bindery, photographic and make-up departments to meet the growing demands.
However, in 1971 and on the verge of success, a disastrous fire put the plant out of operation. Determined not to let his clients down, Tarasov bought time on presses around the city to get his clients’ work out on time… and although there was no money in the jobs, he didn’t lose a customer.
Amalgamation with Theo Skalkos and the ‘Hellenic Herald’ saw a new company with a six-units Community, to which was soon added a ten-unit Goss Urbanite and another Community, this time of four units. The company could now produce 128 pages of tabloid and was producing 35 weekly titles for clients, printers and for themselves.
When that partnership broke up in 1980, Tarasov went independent, enjoying success through the decade as the printer of the growing ‘EAC Multilist’ real estate series, and from 1989, real estate papers for Fairfax in what was to become a 14-year relationship.
The infamous Offset Alpine fire of 1993 created new opportunities for Rotary Offset with work for Australia’s largest publisher ACP, and as a second generation – Tarasov’s son, current managing director Robert – takes over, there are soon thoughts of the improved quality of heatset printing.
The 32-page G14 is installed in the current Homebush site to which they had moved in the early 1990s, meeting market needs and securing the long-term future of the business.
Holihan says the company has undergone a “process of reinvention” in the last couple of years, initiated by the fallout from the global financial crisis, fierce competition across all segments of commercial print, eroding margins and declining page numbers across the industry.
“A complete review and restructure has returned the business to profitability and secured its future,” he says. Part of this is a decision to return to its beginnings as a trade printer has proven a valuable decision in a difficult marketplace.
“We have returned to the very strategy that enabled us to have great success through the 1970s and 80s, of being a trade printer, while of course still work directly with publishers,” says Robert Tarasov. “My father always said that he printed for many other printers, but never pinched their clients. That business ethic is still strong in our company’s values today”.
He expects market and industry consolidation – in both newspaper and commercial segments – will bring more change and further business failures… and more printers looking to cut costs by using third-party suppliers.
By the end of last year, Rotary Offset had managed to pay off all its press, bindery and prepress equipment, an enviable position the company believes vindicates its decision to buy secondhand.
“The strategy looks wiser than ever, especially given the low debt structure of the business and the state of the industry,” Robert Tarasov says.
Further upgrades in the past year help meet clients’ quality expectations and make it easier for the company to compete for work. “This investment and our equipment strategy has been a success, with sales up 40 per cent in 2011 and a strong return to profitability,” he says.
Holihan says changes in culture and cost base, plus the investment in equipment is bringing excellent results, including a ten per cent reduction in operating expenses.
The company has also added several key staff, including operations manager David Atkinson and web press engineer David Hoogkamp.
“We have thrown out the door the typical relaxed family-owned printing culture and replaced it with a tightly run, well managed, corporation,” he says. “Importantly though, we have retained the qualities of being a family-owned and independent printing company that have seen us survive for 50 years.
“I strongly believe that good oldfashioned customer service, honesty, integrity and accessibility to key managers in a price-driven industry is still as important as ever for customer satisfaction and retention.”
