For more than ten years, Foot Print in Mandurah used polyester plates from a DPX platesetter on its Heidelberg offset press. With those plates getting harder to find and the cost of disposing of the treatment chemicals rising, the small family printer needed an upgrade, and Currie Group at PacPrint provided the answer.
Mandurah is an hour south of Perth’s CBD by train, but Foot Print is thankfully only a few minutes from the station. It’s not easy to miss: the brightly-coloured logo is splashed across an entire wall facing Rouse Road. The company recently added a second floor to its offices to house its new digital department – but what I’m here for is downstairs.
Inside, director Patrick Oldfield shows off the tech I’ve come to see: his new CRON TP-2616H computer-to-plate machine, which he saw on Currie Group’s stand at PacPrint in May. “I was looking for a new platemaker, because our old DPX was getting a bit long in the tooth. It was a really good product, and represented good value from Currie Group,” he says.
The quality of the new CRON’s metal plates are much better than the old DPX, and there’s an added bonus, says Oldfield: “The best thing about this one is that it’s chemical-free. The old one was getting a bit expensive: the plates were dearer, and you also had to get rid of the chemicals. It was especially pricey out here, because the waste agency would have to come out specifically to pick up our chemicals. This plate system is definitely cheaper to produce than the old one,” he said.
Established in 1992, Foot Print is run by Oldfield, his son James, who has just completed his apprenticeship, and his daughter Stella. Their main clients are local government, small business, and a couple of the big mining companies. “Mandurah’s grown massively since we started, the population has doubled. We’ve expanded our company from two employees to seven,” Oldfield says.
Foot Print’s CRON TP-2616H is the first CRON H-series CTP machine to be installed in Australia. Adrian Dixon, WA state manager at Currie Group, says the machine was a good match for a good customer. “Patrick was definitely no stranger to us when we met up with him at PacPrint, we’ve had a long-standing relationship with Foot Print with them buying supplies from us regularly.
“Not only did the CRON fit within the same footprint, if you’ll pardon the pun, it also offered a greener solution for them, as we have eliminated the chemistry from the old DPX technology with the new Agfa Azura TE plates and CRON CTP combination,” Dixon says.