KEEPING THE PRESS GOING
Experience at heart of print centre’s successes
Every night the dedicated team at the Townsville Print Centre is responsible for ensuring the printed copies of the Townsville Bulletin are ready to hit the shelves and be delivered to homes first thing the next day.
But the Townsville Print Centre is so much more than just a site for printing the Townsville Bulletin.
“We print a whole suite of news products and products for well established commercial print clients,” Townsville Print Centre operations leader Matt Richards said.
The site, which is reigning News Media Print Centre of the Year after winning the title in both 2018 and 2019 has national clients including JB HiFi, the Good Guys, Chemist Warehouse and Harvey Norman.
There is also a range of privately owned commercial clients, including regional newspapers, serviced by the print centre.
The site prints everything from magazine-style publications to newspapers on the 160 page tabloid press and has stitching and gluing capabilities.
The Townsville Print Centre is equivalent to the largest printing press in Australia and features a Manroland Geoman press with publishing equipment from Swiss company Ferag after a $52m investment by News Corp in 2010.
Mr Richards said the success of the centre largely came down to the number of highly experienced staff and safety culture of the site.
“We have trade qualified printers, fitters and turners, electricians, stores and pub
lishing staff with a full-time base of 19 staff and 30 casuals,” Mr Richards said.
“It is also a really safe print site with no workplace injuries for the past nine years.”
Mr Richards, who himself has worked at the centre for 18 years after starting out as a night shift printer, praised the number of long-serving staffers including Steve Phillips and Rob Delaney who have worked at the print site for 40 years and 38 years respectively.
He said without such an experienced and dedicated team the site would not be able to operate at such a high level.
But he was quick to point out that all members of the team played a vital role in the centre’s success.
Each week the Townsville Print Centre prints about 60 different newspaper editions for well over half a million individual papers.
The site uses more than 80 tonnes of paper per week as well as 500kg of cyan, magenta and yellow ink and 800kg of black ink. The site also consumes approximately 6000 print plates per week.
Despite the range of resources required to print multiple products, Mr Richards said there was a strong focus on sustainability at the site.
“Everything we do here, if we don’t sell it we recycle it,” Mr Richards said.
“And everything we sell we expect consumers to recycle.
“All of the paper used is from renewable forests.”